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LAND OF MIRACLES 








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THE FORTRESS DREAMS, AND WHILE IT DREAMS FALLS 
EVER SO SLOWLY INTO RUIN 


COLOMBIA 
LAND OF MIRACLES 


BY 
BLAIR NILES 


AUTHOR OF “CASUAL WANDERINGS IN ECUADOR,” ETC. 


PHOTOGRAPHS BY 


ROBERT L. NILES, Jr. 





PUBLISHED BY THE CENTURY CO. 
NEW YORK AND LONDON : :_ 1924 
















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The author is indebted to the editors of 
the ‘‘Century’’ and ‘‘Harper’s’’ maga- 
zines for permission to incorporate such 
parts of this narrative as have appeared 
in their publications. 


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PREFACE 


In Colombia we traveled by the longest hydro- 
plane service in the world, and three days later 
journeyed by ox-cart to visit the falls of Tequen- 
dama. We were limp with tropic heat, and in seven 
hours we shivered in the cold of the high plateau. 
For in Colombia extremes of climate, of altitude, 
and of civilization meet. There the present and the 
past live for a moment side by side, almost on terms 
of equality; before both give place to the waiting 
wonder which is the future. 

Because of this meeting of the centuries, one may 
realize the march of life from the days of astound- 
ing Spanish Conquest, of black magic, of miracle 
and saint; through revolution and subsequent strug- 
gle toward democracy; and finally to the ambitious 
present when man flies—flies from the coast into the 
heart of the Andes. 

Contemplating all this, I fell into the way of 
thinking of the country as a land of miracles; taking 
miracle in its widest sense, as ‘‘a wonderful thing 
which excites admiration or astonishment,’’ as ‘‘an 


act or manifestation of a spiritual power in the 
1x 


x PREFACE 


universe,’’ and as ‘‘a miraculous story; a legend.”’ 

No adequate portrait of Colombia can ignore any 
of these definitions, for it is from the sum of them 
all that the personality of the land emerges. 

In the hope of capturin® this personality, I have 
let the pageant of to-day move across the back- 
ground of history, of tradition, and of legend. And 
in my great desire that the present should speak 
for itself in its own idiom, I have recorded events 
and conversations in a detail made possible by notes 
taken while words and impressions still warmly 
pulsated; before passing into the echo of memory. 


Buarrz NIzes. 
New York City, 


1924. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 
I WuHeEnN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE . 


II SLAVE OF THE SLAVES . 
III GrEEen CANDLES IN THE DAWN 
IV A Saint. 
V Sacrep REMAINS 
VI Srreets of Rose AND BLUE 
VII Nieut 
VIIL Hap Fate Turnep Up THe Carps 
IX - THREE ENDINGS AND A BEGINNING 
X By SrA-SLED 
XI THE BAcKk WAY TO SAntTA MARTA 
XII Santa Marta 
XIII In THE BANANAS 
XIV Yetiow anv Bue Anp Rep 
XV_ IN Anp Out oF ANTIOQUIA 
XVI InscruTABLE Doors 
XVII Tue HieguH PLATEAU 
XVIII Tse Dirricutr River . 


XIX THe LAND or MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 


127 
134 
148 
163 
176 
188 
209 
235 
248 
265 
309 
326 
306 














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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


The fortress dreams, and while it dreams falls ever so 
Slowlyintoruin. .°. . . .-. . «Frontispiece 


FACING 
PAGE 


Seeuera et the Goca Chica. . .... . 6 « « 4 
SEATED C10 sg gw so el wD 
Meicient waus 0; Cartagena... ..... - +. .« «©, «30a 
The House of the Inquisition . ...... 48 
The patio of San Pedro Claver . . .... .~ 65 
MeermriG OL CArtSgena, i. ule. as ces es es «. 80 
In streets ofroseandblue ....... . 88 
URIPERI RO i Se lly 8 lk le ww we DE 
The Virgin goes on procession . . ... . . 113 


CT a ly ie ee ces | we 18 
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RR a ee TS 


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Beneath the Fortress of San Felipe . . . . . 160 
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XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 
When the Cathedral overflows . ..... . 265 
Roofs of Bogota . . . MR rrr ne 
The Church of Santa Clara, Baan 6 ie a 
The Suburb of Egipto .. . ‘(> 4, "27 GINE | Fgag 
The House of the Marquis of San Jorge . . . . 292 
Robes. of: Humility . ..°., «. .- «oe > ee 
Through the Colonnade of the Capitol. . . . . 305 
The road to Tequenidatha ” .° 70. "ys, 
The plaza of an Andean village.’ . . . . . . 316 
In the old salt mine at Zipaquira . . . . . . o20 
The Magdalena—as it was ‘in the beginning 5) Te ese 
A Magdalena river-boat .. . . oR: re 
Citizens of the Island of the Boly C Crose’ s)he 
The Magdaleha from the dir * .° 7 9) ee 


COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 











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COLOMBIA, LAND OF 
MIRACLES 


CHAPTER I 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 


EK glided gently through the narrow entrance, 
and as we passed I realized with a gasp of 


amazement that we on our White Fruit boat—we 
were too big for the forts! 

Old books describe Cartagena’s ‘‘frowning and 
menacing forts,’’ designed to keep greedy pirates 
from entering the golden city. And I had pictured 
them thus grimly threatening. It was therefore as- 
tonishing to find ourselves looking down upon the 
might of the sixteenth century, positively towering 
above it; astonishing that the power which was 
Spain should show itself as two toy forts, facing 
the open ocean with embrasures empty and sentry- 
boxes deserted. 

To eyes accustomed to the proportions of sky- 
scrapers and ocean liners our ship had seemed small 
enough. Now, passing through the Boca Chica, be- 

3 


4 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


tween the ancient forts of San José and San 
Fernando, she appeared a Goliath. We and the 
famous forts were absurdly out of scale; for 
since their building, how busy has man been with his 
hands! When he first made a little sailing craft he 
had thought it a fine thing, saying to himself, ‘‘ What 
a brave boy am I!’’ And he had then built little 
forts to destroy the little ships of other ‘‘brave 
boys.’? Then bigger ships and bigger forts, until 
we, on our modest steamer passing between those 
forts of yesterday, felt ourselves to be on board an 
ocean-going monster. 

Through the Boca Chica we entered a spacious 
and tranquil bay, land-locked but for its two mouths: 
the Little Mouth, now its only entrance; and the 
Great Mouth, the Boca Grande, which three hundred 
years ago the Spaniards had caused to be closed, at 
immense cost of labor and money, for in those days 
no sum was too great to expend in the protection 
of their peerless Cartagena, their ‘‘Pearl of the 
Caribes.”’ 

Within the harbor the blue and sparkling water 
rippled in foamless waves from our path. 

Hills surround this azure bay, as though a crown 
of emeralds had been laid upon the water; and at 
intervals along the shores, buried in the foliage of 
palm and banana and the massed scarlet of flowering 





ON GUARD AT THE BOCA CHICA 


~ 








WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 5 


trees, are tiny settlements roofed with thatch or 
tile. The ages have not diminished the shimmering 
sunlit beauty of the bay. 

We followed a winding channel whose course is 
marked here and there by buoys. Solemn brown 
pelicans paused on the buoys, flying ahead at our 
approach, pausing upon another buoy, and again 
flying ahead. With gardenias in their buttonholes 
they would have made perfectly respectable double- 
chinned ushers, pompously showing the way. 

They thus escorted us past the inner forts, past 
Manzanillo and Castillo Grande, with its little 
empty sentry-box white in the morning sun, sug- 
gesting in its whiteness and in its shape the minaret 
of an Oriental mosque. And again I had that sense 
of being so grotesquely too big! 

We were steaming toward a city which, domed 
and walled and turreted, seemed to float on the sur- 
face of the water, as though, with only its glittering 
head yet visible, it paused in the act of miraculously 
rising from the still blue sheen of the bay; a city 
constructed bit by bit in my mind, and now magically 
coming true as we sailed slowly up the bay following 
the pelicans. 

But we were still too big for the landscape, and it 
was not until after we had left the ship that I felt 
myself once more in scale with the environment. 


6 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


For a few cents a little train carried us from the 
dock to the railroad station which stands outside the 
walls, and then in an old-fashioned low-swung vic- 
toria we drove through the gate under the clock- 
tower and into the walled city of Cartagena—Car- 
tagena of the Indies. 

Within there was heat and color; color and heat. 
The overhanging balconies almost touched hands 
across incredibly narrow streets. Color! Even the 
heavy gratings at the windows were vivid; blue or 
green against walls of vermilion or yellow or rose. 
Color trembling in white waves of heat. 

We drove through a maze of narrow streets, 
streets like slits in a rainbow. And all at once, be- 
fore the coach delivered us at the door of the hotel, 
I had forgotten all about the ship that was too big 
for the forts. 

As though drugged with the heat and with the 
color, as though bewildered by the labyrinth of tor- 
tuous streets, I had slipped suddenly and completely 
out of the present and back—back to the year 1555; 
to the days when anything was possible. 

In that year every tongue in Cartagena whispered 
the name of Rosaura. The daughter of a sorceress, 
she was thought to speak with peculiar authority, 
and there was in her eyes a look and on her lips a 
smile which, added to that dark art inherited from 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 7 


her mother, combined to make Rosaura the sensation 
of her little earthly hour. 

The old chroniclers talk about the witchery of 
that smile. They perpetuate the mysterious pro- 
fundity of her eyes, as they recount the tales of her 
magic. She lived, they tell us, in as great luxury as 
any fine lady. 

And surely it is proof of Rosaura’s magic that she, 
a mulatto sorceress, was able to compete with grand 
ladies whose aristocracy was such that they might 
do nothing without the permission of their fathers 
or their husbands. Such ladies were too precious 
to be allowed to walk or ride unguarded in the 
streets, and scarcely was the light of the tropic day 
permitted to fall upon them. But for the fact that 
they were owned by men, they were almost as 
cloistered as nuns. 

In the year 1555 it was thus a serious matter to be 
a lady, and those whose profession it was were as 
arrogant and haughty as a Chinese woman glorying 
in her deformed feet. 

How suspicious those ladies of colonial Cartagena 
must have been! For the lordly men who possessed 
them sooner or later made their way to that house on 
the outskirts of the town where Rosaura smiled her 
sixteenth-century smile; smiled and drew aside the 
dark veil which separates the known from the occult. 


8 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


She needed all her beauty, all the courage of her 
Spanish father, and all the cunning of her dusky 
mother; for slaves went with ceaseless gossip to 
their jealous mistresses, and holy zealots were active 
in the pursuit and persecution of black magic. 

Rosaura’s life was thus not dull. She never knew 
in the morning, when she fastened in her ears the 
heavy gold hoops, whether before sunset she might 
not be burned alive as a priestess of Satan. But in 
her rich silks from Spain and in the gleam of her 
jewels, Rosaura could shrug her smooth soft shoul- 
ders, defying the envious intrigues of proud ladies, 
defying even the far-reaching power of the church. 

When I discovered Rosaura in the yellow pages of 
tradition, she was awaiting a visit from the 
treasurer, Saavedra. The great merchant, Juan 
Orozco, had first brought Saavedra to her. But 
although it was common talk that Orozco owed his 
wealth to the advice Rosaura gave him, still 
Saavedra had been skeptical. 

Rosaura, I fancied, let her bracelets slip back and 
forth along her satin arms, listening absently to the 
metallic tinkle of bracelet against bracelet, while her 
eyes stared straight ahead, profound black deeps; 
and a little slow sigh slipped from her, a weary little 
sigh, for Rosaura faced the ordeal of creation. 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 9 


‘‘Saavedra,’’ she sighed, ‘‘Saavedra shall see 
what he shall see... .”’ 


It is night, and Saavedra has come. Rosaura re- 
ceives him in a tiny inner room. The walls and the 
eeiling of this room are painted black. One lantern 
relieves and yet accentuates the gloom; so placed 
that its light falls full upon a great earthenware tub 
which stands on a table in the center of the room. 
The water with which this tub is filled gleams in the 
lantern-light, ike some dark Lilliputian lake across 
which a moonbeam has flung its path: the pale beam 
of a moon which has suddenly come out from behind 
the clouds of a starless sky, inky above some somber 
little world. And no faintest noise of the city pene- 
trates this gloom. | 

The personality of Saavedra crowds the room: so 
eruel and bold is the stare of his black eyes in their 
bushy bristling frame, and so fierce are his black 
mustachios. 

‘‘So it is you!’’ Rosaura’s scornful lips show the 
gleam of teeth. ‘‘Coward, if you have fear, why do 
you seek again the opportunity to display it?’’ 

The powerful Saavedra is strangely meek. 

‘**T thought you deceived me—made game of me.’’ 

‘And now you come because the news from the 


10 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


sea bears out all I showed you. Now that you know 
it to be true even to the day and the hour. 

‘‘Months ago I showed you here on the face of 
this water all that men are saying to-day in the 
market-place and in the plaza. I showed you the 
ship which carried Heredia to Spain. You even saw 
him pass along the deck leaning on the arm of his 
nephew. And you knew him to be beyond question 
Heredia, Governor of Cartagena. 

‘‘But you were a fool and a coward. You 
thought that I, Rosaura, made a mock of things so 
mysterious! 

‘‘Very well, why do you come again to the house 
of Rosaura?’’ : 

‘‘T come because you showed truly, Rosaura. All 
as you say, came to pass as I saw it here on the 
surface of the water. 

‘¢There was the ship—La Capitana. I read even 
the name upon its bow. And there was Heredia 
himself walking its deck. There was also the sea 

. at first calm... then the wind. . . the sky 
all at once dark . . . waves. . . waves. It wasa 
hurricane. La Capitana was caught in a hurricane. 
News of all this came to-day.’’ 

‘‘But,’’ jeers Rosaura; ‘‘but there is no news of 
your friend Heredia, eh? And so the great Saavedra 
comes again to poor Rosaura!’’ 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 11 


‘‘There is gold to pay for the news, Rosaura.”’ 

And the mighty male creature becomes a pleading 
and credulous child before a mulatto girl who calls 
herself a sorceress. 

‘‘There is gold to pay, Rosaura.’’ 

Rosaura laughs. 

‘*It would be worth gold indeed—much gold—to 
Saavedra to know the fate of his friend Heredia, no? 
And why does Saavedra so—”’ 

‘‘So hate Heredia?’’ he snarls. ‘‘I hate because 
I hate, nor am [ alone in hating. Why did Heredia 
leave the city he founded? Why has he gone to 
Spain to lay his case before the crown, if not because 
he sowed here the seeds which inevitably grow and 
blossom into hate? 

‘There, I have answered your why with my be- 
cause! Por qué y porque, no?”’ 

Saavedra has drawn close to the earthen tub. He 
stands over it, a towering figure which breathes 
hard. The walls seem to give back emphasized and 
exaggerated the deep rolling r’s of his Spanish, 
““Por qué y porque, no?”’ 

As Rosaura confronts this Saavedra, the pale 
light of the lantern reveals her face, showing it tense 
and still with the smile gone out of it. Her heaving 
breast marks a sort of time; for the time of the out- 
side world has ceased to be, and here in this black 


12 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


chamber time is measured by the pulsation of 
Rosaura’s heart. 

For a space there is only this heart-beat of time. 
Then suddenly: 

‘‘Look,’’ cries Rosaura. ‘‘Look at the water. 
Look. And don’t stop looking. Look and look and 
looksene. 4 

‘There is nothing, Rosaura. There is only the 
water with the light of the lantern falling along it.’’ 

‘*Again look. Do you not now see a ship—a ship 
just where the light lies?”’ 

‘It is La Capitana!’’ Saavedra starts up. 

‘‘Quiet! Dare not break the thread of enchant- 
ment. Look!’’ Rosaura’s voice sternly commands. 
‘‘Look.’’ 

‘*Tt is the ship and it is night,’’? Saavedra mutters, 
bending lower over the earthen tub. 

And again in the still black room where lantern- 
light glints on water, only the pulsing of Rosaura’s 
breast marks the passing time. ? 

‘‘Tt is night. And the wind blows the waves high. 
Once more La Capitana battles with a stormy sea. 
Will she this time conquer as before?’’ The voice 
now speaking does not seem to belong to Rosaura. 
The mocking girl has vanished, leaving in her place 
this monotonous chanting voice. 

‘*It is night,’’ the voice repeats, ‘‘night, and again 





THE WAY. 





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INTO THE- Gite 


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WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 13 


the wind blows the waves high. The waves toss the 
ship. Itisfuriousnow...the wind... 

‘‘Listen! I hear the creaking of the timbers as the 
waves dash and break against the sides of the boat.’’ 

**T, too, hear.’’ Saavedra shudders. 

‘‘Dare not break the thread,’’? Rosaura intones. 
‘<The timbers creak... . There is lightning. And 
Isee...Isee land. It is the coast of Spain!’’ 

““The coast of Spain!’’ Saavedra’s lungs seem 
to fight for air. ‘‘Yes, I also see. But what more— 
what more, Rosaura?’’ 

‘‘Now I don’t see them any longer. The vision 
passes.’’ 

There is for a space only the rise and fall of her 
breast. And then the voice resumes. 

‘“<There is again the lightning. But something has 
happened. The ship is not the same. Look! It is 
the rudder. Yes, the rudder is missing. See, how 
the ship pitches wildly. The wind, the wind and the 
waves are now its captain. The wind... Let him 
who can... Let him who can save himself! .. .’’ 

In the heat and terror of the room the sweat pours 
down Saavedra’s swarthy face, now waxy pale. 

‘‘Look. Do not cease to look.... I see Heredia 
in the water. He fights. Nowheisgone.... Now 
again on the very foam of the wave. Look... .”’ 

‘*Ah, Rosaura!’’ 


14 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘‘Once more gone... quite gone... . Again, 
how he fights the sea! One more effort—one more 
and he is saved. There lies Spain, the coast of 
Spain. He cannot fail now. His feet touch the very 
earth. 

‘‘Look’’; the voice booms like a far-off bell. 
‘“‘Look . . . Look!”’ 

‘‘The earth of Spain, Rosaura.’’ 

‘‘Liook!’’ The voice tolls. ‘‘Do not break the 
thread of enchantment. Only look.’’ 

‘‘There comes a vast rushing wave. God, what a — 
wave! And where? Where, Rosaura, is Heredia?”’ 

‘‘Look!”’ 

‘‘It is dark. I no longer see. Tell me, Rosaura, 
where? I see nothing.’’ 

‘“There is nothing, Saavedra. Nothing. There is 
only the empty beach; waves pounding—beating in 
long lines on the beach. And the beach . . . the 
beach is empty.’’ 


So passes my vision of the legend. But I seem 
to hear a faint weary sigh, the tired sigh of creation. 
I seem to know that somewhere in the far-off past 
Rosaura’s spirit lies spent and limp. 

I pick up the little green volume where I first dis- 
covered the shade of Rosaura wandering among the 
legends and traditions of Cartagena. About it 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 15 


clings still the faint musty odor of the tropics; the 
familiar odor of sheets and pillows and towels grown 
musty in the tropics. 

And I read on the yellow-stained pages of the book 
a foot-note which states that on January 28, 1555, 
nearly a thousand miles in the inaccessible interior, 
in the lofty city of Bogota, a paper was found fixed 
to the walls of the cathedral. The paper proclaimed 
that on the distant coast of Spain the sailing vessel 
La Capitana had been wrecked; giving the hour, the 
day, and the month, and further announcing that 
with the ship had perished all souls on board. 

The old chronicler Rodriguez Fresle suggests that 
this news came to Bogota through one Juana Garcia, 
mother of that Rosaura of Cartagena who had upon 
the previous night shown to Saavedra these strange 
events clearly mirrored in an earthenware tub of 
water; events which months later were corroborated 
by the ships which came out from Spain. 


It was this ancient Cartagena of Rosaura, Saave- 
dra, and Heredia that I saw as we drove through 
the crooked painted streets on the bright July morn- 
ing of our arrival. 

And now looking back over those first dave when 
I could not free myself from the drama of centuries 
long past, I find that Rosaura in her black room still 


16 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


appears persistently before me. I visualize that old 
Cartagena, and there is always Rosaura with her 
mocking smile and her smoldering eyes. 

‘‘Very well, Rosaura. You shall make me see 
your city as you made Saavedra see the ship and 
Heredia fighting the sea.’’ 

And the shade of Rosaura is flattered and inter- 
ested, for she had been proud of the profession of 
sorceress. Thus together we explore the thick dusk 
of vanished years. 

I know what I want. I want to follow the life of 
a certain Jesuit priest, Pedro Claver, who captured 
my imagination from the moment I met him in the 
pages of a book of Cunninghame Graham’s; but 
Claver had come to Cartagena just after Rosaura’s 
day, and she can vivify only the life during her in- 
carnation as sorceress: of the sixteenth century. 
Thus I let her wander among her own fantastic 
shadows. 

And among those shadows is Car6én, the wizard 
who was her predecessor. I, too, am familiar with 
Caron, for his tradition still survives, passed from 
mouth to mouth and finally preserved in those 
legends which have been assembled by Delgado. Of 
course Rosaura knew nothing of Delgado. But she 
knew of Caron. 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 17 


‘*Tf you will look upon the water, senora. If you 
will look as Saavedra looked, you will see old Caron. 

‘‘The cacique, his master, has sent for him. Be- 
cause white men have come to Cartagena, the cacique 
is much troubled. These white men kill. They kill 
with lightning. They sit on moving monsters with 
four arms. ‘These monsters cry out in a manner 
which makes the very skin of Indians creep. The 
chief of these white men is called Heredia. He isa 
being of terror and power, perhaps not of this earth. 
So the poor Indians thought of the white men. They 
did not know that Rosaura would one day show the 
very waves which were to sweep this Heredia to his 
doom. Thus filled with his fears, the cacique is 
troubled and has sent for Caron. 

‘¢Now you see Carén. He is passing through the 
streets. His face is stained with the juice of plants, 
and he is decked out with feathers. There are 
Indians at his side who play on instruments made 
of shells. He is very clear now on the face of the 
water. You can see the strange faces he makes as 
he comes. The faces of Carén must surely always 
be remembered in Cartagena. He cries out, too, and 
utters unknown words. The Indians are very 
frightened, for Carén is wise. Therefore the cacique 
desires him. 


18 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘‘But with all his wisdom, senora, Caron fails to 
read the future truly. He counsels war, not knowing 
that only the waves will conquer Heredia. 

‘‘Carén counsels war and the surface of my bowl 
is troubled, as the cacique was troubled. The water 
is no longer my clear mirror. So it is always when 
there is war in the air. The water is red and 
troubled. For the cacique battles against the white 
met ois. 

‘‘Now a peace has been made. That I know from 
the sudden smoothness of the water. 

‘‘Look. Here Carén again enters. He will now 
amuse the cacique and Heredia and all their chiefs. 
First there is war. Then peace. Then always the 
lords of the war gather for entertainment. I see 
men digging in the patio a space so many rods by so 
many rods. While they dig, Caron stands before the 
chiefs. He is chewing live coals. He sends them 
forth again in a rain of stars. This he does with the 
snortings of a mad beast, but with no smallest sign 
of suffering. All that I show you here is true, 
sehora; for my mother has often told me of it. I 
think that as a child she herself may even have seen 
it. 

‘‘Tiook where Heredia sits. He sits amazed. 
There were no such wizards in Spain. So Saavedra 
himself admitted to me. 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 19 


‘<The men who dig now fill the space with coals. 
With huge fans Indians blow these coals. The 
embers burn red. And you can hear.... If you 
will listen well you can hear the shell instruments 
of Car6n’s musicians. And there, plainly enough, 
is Caron bowing low to the cacique and to Heredia. 
Now he dances. He dances slowly across the red bed 
of the coals. He dances across and back again. He 
does not even hurry in his bare feet over the coals. 
Thus he dances slowly to the music of the shells. 
And at the end Heredia, nor any of his chiefs, can 
find an injury upon the feet of Caron! Ah, Carén 
was clever, though he could not look into the dis- 
tance, nor read the future. 

‘‘And now appears a joke on the water, senora. 
See Heredia. He calls to him one of his soldiers. 
He commands him to take out his left eye; for 
Heredia would confront the cacique with some prodi- 
gious wonder. ‘This soldier removes his eye, not 
once but many times, for as Heredia well knew his 
eye was of glass. Caron and the cacique are speech- 
less. They meditate long. 

‘At last when the cacique and Heredia part, at 
the moment of embracing, you can hear that the 
cacique whispers in the ear of Heredia. He whis- 
pers, ‘Friend, thy wizard removed only the left eye!’ 

‘How Saavedra would laugh, senora, when he told 


20 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


that joke on Heredia! For Saavedra’s hate died 
only with Saavedra!”’ 


Thus the phantom of Rosaura quickens for me 
the quaint traditions which are partly history and 
partly legend; each significant because each is a bit 
of the pattern of that far-famed Cartagena of the 
Indies, to which the priest Claver had come early in 
the seventeenth century. 

Among those legends is also the story of the en- 
chanted hens. 

After the many bloody battles in which the 
Spaniards were victorious, peace, as Rosaura said, 
had been made. Heredia then encouraged trade 
with the neighboring tribes by gifts of pigs, chickens, 
and cattle. And very cautiously the Indians were 
entering into commercial relations with their con- 
querors. So, little by little, the Spanish influence 
was extended into the surrounding districts, where, 
according to the old historians, gold was found to be 
‘‘ronning in the dust,’’ so that when any one had 
need of money, all that was necessary was to go out 
after a shower and scoop up the sand of the little 
ravines. There gold would always be found. 

But Rosaura knew of a certain Rebolledo, a poor 
silver-smith from Cadiz, who did not have to go 
looking for gold. The gold came to him. 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 21 


One day he bought a hen from an Indian who had 
paddled in with a canoe full of chickens, which, tied 
together by their legs, lay in the bottom of the canoe 
like a pile of damp feathers, but moving from time 
to time, as though the feathers covered something 
alive there in the bottom of the boat. 

Rebolledo took his hen home. His son Cola 
plucked it, and his daughter Mina roasted it. At 
breakfast Mina cried out that she had broken a 
tooth in the gizard of the chicken. But the pebble 
which had broken her tooth proved to be a nugget of 
gold—pure gold! 

Rebolledo ran back to the dock to look for the 
canoe from which he had bought this hen. And in 
the gizzard of the second fowl was a nugget even 
larger than the first. 

“‘Children!’’ he cried. ‘‘We shall eat chicken 
without cost! The whip to either of you who 
breathes a word!”’ 

Back again he went to the dock, where he bought 
all the remaining hens. 

‘‘Your fowls, friend Indian,’’ he said, ‘‘are deli- 
cious. My daughter, Mina, has a shop for the sale 
of chicken meat. Bring us as many as you can.”’ 

So it was that fortune sent gold to the lucky 
Rebolledo, although the secret, Rosaura declared, 
was not discovered until he had returned to Spain, 


22 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


a rich man; but people ever after looked carefully 
in the gizzards of the chickens they ate. 


I recall to Rosaura the fire of 1552, which occurred 
three years before the shipwreck which cost the 
Governor Heredia his life. 

The story of the fire, Rosaura thinks, is really 
the story of a great love and a great jealousy. 

Among the braves who had aided Heredia in the 
conquest there had been Don Luis Bravo. I must 
have heard of Don Luis? He was not only a 
‘‘bravo’’ but a ‘discreet gentleman given to love- 
making.’? Those were the days when because of its 
vast wealth adventurers had flocked to Cartagena. 
There had even been women among them; Spanish 
women daring the long sea-voyage in the hope that 
in the Indies they might secure husbands and 
fortunes. | 

Most sly of them all had been Dorotea Zequeira 
whose caprice it was to call herself a widow, the 
widow of Soria. This Dorotea was so practised in 
the art of fascination that she even succeeded in 
captivating Don Luis Bravo himself; that is until 
one day, wandering on the outskirts of the town, his 
eyes fell bewitched upon the Indian girl Anica. 

After that poor Don Luis could not eat nor sleep. 
He might even have gone so far as to sell his soul 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 23 


to Satan, if he had not luckily happened to consult 
Celestina, a specialist in love attacks; and Celes- 
tina’s skill was such that in the end the innocent 
Anica became the lover of the great Spanish gentle- 
man, Don Luis. 

There had been plenty to run with news of this to 
Dorotea, who, insane with jealousy, had employed 
a good-for-nothing Gipsy to brew her a drink, to be 
taken a few drops in water before going to bed. 

But Don Luis continued to love Anica. 

The Gipsy therefore made an appointment with 
Dorotea to come at midnight to her house and there 
to prepare a drug which would be infallible. 

All this took place in the month of January, when 
the winds are high. Indeed so strongly did the wind 
blow the flames of the Gipsy’s charcoal stove that the 
table on which it stood caught fire. And in a moment 
the garments which Dorotea wore were blazing, and 
in her terror she had rushed out of the house. She 
ran screaming through the streets, but the faster 
she ran the more the flames wrapped themselves 
around her. The Gipsy, too, called for aid, but be- 
cause of the late hour the people rested after the 
weariness of the day, and they were slow to rouse. 
The house had stood at the north end of the city, so 
that the high strong wind drove the sparks and 
flames back over the neighboring houses. 


24 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘¢ Ah-h!?? 

Rosaura’s wraith becomes violently excited as she 
relives the scene of that fire. 

‘‘The flames run from thatch to thatch, senora. I 
see on the water the light of the flames. I hear the 
bells which at last sound the alarm. Now people 
jump from their beds. ‘A foe has set fire to the 
town.’ That is what all are saying. ‘The enemy is 
here.’ 

‘‘They run distracted, not knowing whether to flee 
from the enemy or to fight the fire. 

‘‘The flames whirl. They leap high. The night 
is no longer dark. The flames run from housetop 
to housetop. They leave ashes behind them. The 
bells ring. And everywhere . . . everywhere the 
people ery out. And the flames run. There is much 
loss. Houses are gone. Corn and oil and wine... . 
Everything is destroyed. Cartagena in ashes be- 
cause Dorotea could not win from Anica the love of 
Don Luis! 

‘*All took place, sefora, as I now show it to 
Vou iw. hi 
‘‘The Gipsy woman was hanged at once by 
Heredia’s order, as a warning and in memory of 
the sufferers. Also he commanded that from that 
day the houses of Cartagena should be of lime and 
stone, of brick and tile.’’ 


WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE 25 


‘‘And Anica?’’ 

‘‘Oh, Anica gave birth to so beautiful a little 
daughter that Don Luis married her at once. 
Heredia, the governor, was groomsman at the wed- 
ding.’? 

Life was in those days so simple. 


CHAPTER II 
SLAVE OF THE SLAVES 


T was to the Cartagena of Rosaura’s legends that 
I three hundred years ago the young priest Claver 
came out from Spain, burning with the strange holy 
fire which from time to time in the ages has con- 
sumed some rare spirit. 

‘“‘T, Pedro Claver,’’ he had written, ‘‘swear to God 
Almighty, before the Virgin, His mother, in the 
presence of the Celestial Court and of those around 
me, to preserve forever poverty, chastity, and obedi- 
ence in the Society of Jesus.’’? And he had signed 
the vow, ‘‘Pedro Claver, slave of the slaves until 
death.”’ 

In a day when the fattest profits were reaped from — 
groaning black cargo; when a human creature might 
be purchased for five dollars in Africa and sold in 
Cartagena for two hundred and fifty, Claver came 
out to the Indies to become the ‘‘slave of the slaves.’’ 

From fragmentary anecdotes of this long-dead 
priest I had begun to construct a forgotten Carta- 


gena; a Cartagena of intimate human emotions, un- 
26 


SLAVE OF THE SLAVES 27 


described in books where dates and historical facts 
are stressed and where the details of fortifications 
are analyzed and diagramed. 

I knew, for example, that it would be charming 
to walk upon the city walls at sunset and to look out 
at the ships in the bay, because Claver refused ever 
to walk upon those walls to gaze at ships in the 
lovely bay. Because this young priest thought he 
must not listen to the news from Spain, I realized 
how eagerly the exiles in that far-away little colony 
awaited news of home, news months old when it 
reached them, but treasured and discussed until the 
next ship brought fresher tidings. And I knew that 
in this distant Cartagena there was sometimes diver- 
sion, for Claver refused to hear ‘‘dialogues, even 
when they were good.’’ I knew also that those 
plucky colonists suffered from mosquitoes, because 
it was written that Claver had thought it wrong to 
brush them from his hands or face. 

But that I might further understand Colombia in 
the person of this priest who two hundred years 
after his death was made its saint, I would let the 
known facts of his life pass through my mind, mov- 
ing out as far as possible all the familiar mental 
furniture and letting the stage set itself as the Car- 
tagena of the days when the great walls were build- 
ing; when every year ten thousand African slaves 


28 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


entered the country by way of its harbor, and when 
a green cross marked the location of the Inquisition. 

And in this excursion into seventeenth-century 
Colombia I would keep with me the friendly wraith 
of Rosaura, visualizing for her the story of Claver 
and fancying what would be her comments. 


Rosaura, I begin, Rosaura, do you remember how 
the sun glitters on the bay of Cartagena? 

It glitters, and a ship has come into the bay. 
There is no breeze, no life in the sails. Sweat pours 
from the men who row, for it is the hot hour of noon, 
and the sun glitters on the blue. 

The shopkeepers have padlocked their doors while 
they sleep away the midday. 

A priest is hurrying along the deserted streets. 
From time to time he stops to knock on one of the 
closed doors. He is begging. 

‘‘A slave-ship enters the harbor,’’ he is saying. 
‘‘And we must speak to them with our hands before 
we can speak with our lips.’’ 

And men rise and unlock their doors, for it is 
lucky to give to a priest. Refusal might invite dis 
aster. | 

So Claver hurries in the heat from door to door. 

And I confide to Rosaura how strange I find it 
that a man who understands the importance of 


SLAVE OF THE SLAVES 29 


‘¢speaking with the hands’’ should be able to tolerate 
slavery itself. 

While Rosaura murmurs something about white 
men always having had slaves, my thought rushes 
forward to the year 1924, finding there statesmen 
gravely formulating laws for the humane conduct 
of warfare, while brave men and women dare death 
to bring help to battle-fields where civilization has 
at vast expense killed and mutilated itself. 

After this forward look it is possible to move less 
critically in the seventeenth century; no longer ex- 
claiming, How can this or that have been? no longer 
surprised at Claver as he hurries to the slave-ship 
with gifts of food and medicine, fearlessly descend- 
ing when the hatches are lifted, descending into the 
hold of a slave-ship where there is horror, stench 
and disease, death and terror. 

Claver hurries down into the hold. The voyage 
has been long by sail from Africa. Children have 
been born in the black heat of the hold. And many 
—old and young—have died. Birth and death have 
taken place without care. The sailors, fearing 
plague and smallpox, have opened the hatch only 
long enough to supply food and water to their human 
eargo. And to the suffering of that hold has been 
added the black terror of the savage mind. 

Day and night they moan that at’ the end of the 


30 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


voyage they are to be killed—all killed, and their 
bones ground to make the white man’s gunpowder. 

And now the ship no longer moves. The hatch is 
opened. 

Do they come at last to kill for the gunpowder? 

The light blinds... . Who comes? 

A man in a long black robe comes. There are 
men with him; negro men who speak what the man 
in the gown is saying. 

He is offering food. For the ill there is medicine. 
And all the time through the negro men he is speak- 
ing of love and of some one called God. It is this 
God who is represented as loving them so much. 

Love! They must have known love simply as ani- 
mals know it—that, plus the indefinable something 
which is inseparable from the human ability to re- 
member the past and to look forward to the future. 

God... loving them! What are they to make of 
such words? But the man who speaks to them gives 
food and cares for the sick. It begins almost to 
look as though perhaps their bones were not after all | 
to make gunpowder! 

If not... if not, it will be good to walk agam 
on land under the sky, to sit basking in the sun, and 
to look upon palm-trees. 

The man in the robe is saying that some one—they 
are not sure who—but some one loves them. 


SLAVE OF THE SLAVES 31 


They dimly, slowly, visualize love... . Some one, 
he says, loves them, and it is all a lie about the gun- 
powder. 

It will then be good to walk—to walk again on 
land under the sky. 


The old writers say that such was Claver’s imme- 
diate influence over these newly arrived slaves that 
they would follow him on shore; going ‘‘quite peace- 
ably and gently, like sheep.’? And Pedro Claver? 
What were his sensations? Did he never turn to 
look at his black flock, uneasy, remorseful, filled with 
foreboding and with deep despair? 

The chroniclers continue, without comment of 
horror or surprise, that whenever there was a lull in 
the slave traffic Pedro Claver would exclaim bitterly, 
‘Ah, who would not see himself on the coasts of 
Guinea, of Carabal, and of Arda, converting the 
souls of the poor negroes!’’ 

I had marveled that a man who wrote himself 
down ‘‘the slave of the slaves forever’’ could endure 
the hideous fact of slavery. And here I was forced 
to see tears of frustration in Claver’s eyes when no 
ship brought him negroes to convert; forced slowly 
to recognize that for all those forty years of his life 
in Cartagena he had rejoiced in the opportunity 
which the slave traffic offered him. The horror of 


32 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


it I felt he brushed aside as after all a small price 
to pay for the eternal salvation of one’s soul. In 
the salvation of the enslaved he must have believed 
slavery was justified. And to this arduous task of 
redemption he untiringly gave himself. 

The mists were lifting for me about the psychology 
of the saint Pedro Claver. 


But I am forgetting Rosaura. Psychology does 
not interest her. She waits for me to go on with 
the story. 

Into the familiar patio of Claver’s convent I there- 
fore proceed to picture for myself and for Rosaura 
Claver’s conversion of the slaves. 

The patio is quiet and sunny. On three sides the 
arched and galleried convent shuts out the world, 
and on the fourth side stands the church. The patio 
is quite still save for perhaps a faint drone of priests 
at mass. There, Claver has his negroes assemble, 
arranged in groups according to the dialect they 
speak. And when all are admitted and the great 
door of the convent closed, Claver will enter 
carrying the crucifix. 

Meanwhile the slaves sit in the sun, and inter- 
preters go about asking each one whether he has 
been baptized; each must be questioned privately, 
since, if the question were put and answered aloud, 


ee eS - 








ANCIENT WALLS OF CARTAGENA 


— <a 


— 


a 


SLAVE OF THE SLAVES 33 


all would respond as the first, regardless of the 
fact. For how can the subject of baptism penetrate 
the contentment of slaves sitting in the sun? 

The question is asked. Well, answer it, yes or no, 
and let the man pass on. What does the answer 
matter? When one sits at rest in the sun! 

But their dreamy attention is captured when 
Claver takes his place in the middle of the patio. 
Claver they remember is their friend, for he came 
into the hold of the ship with gifts and with com- 
fort. He is ordering them now to do as they see 
him do. 

This the interpreters repeat to each group. 

Claver then puts his hands to his forehead, saying 
distinctly and very slowly, ‘‘For the sign of the 
Holy Cross.”’ 

The negroes obediently Rive their hands upon 
their foreheads. 

Again the words so slowly and carefully. This 
time Claver’s hand makes the sign. Once more, and 
now uncertainly the negroes imitate the sign. 

Passing then among them Claver has each sep- 
arately go through the ceremony: over and over, 
many weary times over, until the lesson is at last 
perfectly learned, until with the words each clumsy 
black hand performs the sign. 

Group by group is now instructed in the articles 


34 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


of faith and the commandments. Shadows lengthen 
under the arches, and the negroes doze and nod 
under the influence of those articles of faith. 

When the lesson is over Claver once more takes 
his place in the center of the patio. He is holding 
the cross high, and he is chanting: 

‘<Jesucristo, Son of God. Thou art my father and 
my mother and all my good. I love Thee much. My 
soul is heavy at having offended Thee. Senor, I love 
Thee, much... much... much.”’ 

This the interpreters translate; the negroes re- 
peating after them, each as well as he is able, ‘‘I 
love Thee much, much. . . Sefior . . . my soul is 
heavye eae 

Day after day these slaves are brought to the 
patio, and day after day Claver goes patiently over 
the lesson: the sign of the cross, the commandments, 
the articles of faith and the principal prayers of the 
church; the sign of the cross; all countless times 
repeated. 

When at last he is satisfied that each is well in- 
structed he puts the question: ‘‘Do you wish to be- 
come Christians and to go to the sky to enjoy God?”’ 

Here in the patio an altar is then set up, and 
arrangements for baptism proceed at once. Claver 
waits before the altar, as he must often have waited, 





SLAVE OF THE SLAVES 35 


for it is said that in his forty years of service he 
baptized four hundred thousand negroes. 

He stands radiant, and the glory of that salvation 
which he felt himself to bring to the slaves must 
have erased from his mind all memory of the pesti- 
lence and anguish of slave-ships, and all conscious- 
ness of the walls building around the city, building 
just outside his own convent, building by the toil 
of negro slaves working under the lash. Standing 
waiting to perfect the conversion of new souls, 
Claver forgets all. 

The negroes sit very still. They are looking at 
a painting on canvas which has been unrolled before 
them. 

The picture represents Christ upon the cross. The 
blood which drips from his wounds is caught in a 
great receptacle. <A priest has filled a shell with the 
holy blood. He is pouring it over the heads of the 
converts. Surrounding this scene are the figures 
of the pope, the cardinals, bishops, king's, and war- 
riors, ‘‘authorizing by their presence the act of 
baptism.”’ 

In the lower part of the picture there appear on 
one side ‘‘negroes, clean, seated and happy... . 
They are the baptized negroes.’’ On the other side 
are ‘‘filthy and evil-smelling negroes, in the midst 


36 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


of flames which are about to destroy them... . 
They are the negroes who refuse baptism.’’ 

Rosaura agrees with my chronicler that after gaz- 
ing upon this picture it is natural that the negroes 
should have eagerly crowded forward for baptism. 
And she is interested in the new names which they 
receive with their baptism, and approves of the 
labor-saving device of allotting them by groups; 
every group of ten negroes thus receiving the same 
name, which they are made to repeat many times, 
and urged to say frequently to one another that they 
may not forget. She approves also of the medals 
which are finally hung about each neck, medals which 
‘‘served to distinguish those negroes which had been 
regenerated in Christ.’’ 

And when the last medal has been hung about the 
last converted neck, Claver stands triumphant be- 
fore the altar under the open sky of the patio. 


CHAPTER III 
GREEN CANDLES IN THE DAWN 


N our first days in Cartagena, when my mind so 
I persistently haunted the past, I found myself 
often in the little palmy square on which the House 
of the Inquisition fronts. 

I used to sit in this park and watch the shadows 
on the white facade; shadows of the palms in the 
park and shadows of passing people. I knew that 
under that building of gracious dignity were once 
torture-chambers and dungeons. 

How had it been possible? How had men per- 
mitted it, decreed it; men removed from us by only 
three hundred years? 

In Cartagena, watching the shadows quiver, I 
knew that I must understand the Inquisition. Noth- 
ing, I felt—not even human greed with its far con- 
sequences—can be swept aside with summary con- 
demnation, without an attempt to understand causes. 

Thus the Inquisition cannot be dismissed with a 
shudder of disgust. Protestants cannot deposit the 
blame on the door-step of Catholicism and go away; 


for Protestants burned their witches. 
37 


38 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


No, I would repeat to myself, as I went about 
Cartagena, no, I must understand the Inquisition. 

I was not puzzled at the part which lust for power 
had played. That was simple. The thing which 
baffled me was that the Inquisition could have been 
countenanced by good and sincere men. 

So I used to sit and wonder, watching the shadows; 
wondering, of course, chiefly about Pedro Claver. 
During his years in Cartagena the Inquisition had 
been at the height of its power. How could this 
gentle priest who with his own hands cared tenderly 
for negro slaves, scorning to fear leprosy or small- 
pox or fever; how could he whose life was wholly 
given to the lowest and the most wretched ; how could 
he have endured the horror of burning and scourging 
and torture? 

And now looking back still perplexed, I turn to 
my phantom companion. 

‘There, Rosaura, in that quiet little park the 
Inquisition used to preside over the Auto de Fe! 
And how could Claver ever have been part of that 
horrible pageant?’’ 

But Rosaura is not concerned with Claver. She 
is asking what I mean by the Inquisition and what 
was the Auto de Fe. And I realize that the Holy 
Tribunal was established after her death. 

The Inquisition—I cannot explain it to Rosaura 


Ter) 


ee ee ee 


i. be ee” ee ee 


4 
; 
vy. 
i 





GREEN CANDLES IN THE DAWN 39 


unless I force myself to look upon it; and if I am 
to picture those days when anything was possible, I 
can no longer shudder away from the Inquisition. 


It was the year 1614; and in the quiet square where 
I so often sat and wondered, there were then 
gathered the high dignitaries of the church, the 
officers of the Holy Inquisition, and fifty of the 
principal citizens who in their most gala garments 
were mounted on spirited horses. In imposing for- 
mation this company left the park, marching forward 
to the sound of trumpets, flageolets, and kettle- 
drums. They passed thus through the streets, 
making everywhere announcement of the Auto 
de Fe, to be held for ‘‘the greater purification of the 
Faith.’’ 

And I know what must have been the effect in that 
Cartagena where dialogues were the diversion and 
the news from Spain came at long intervals over 
the treacherous sea! I know because the great dark 
eyes of Rosaura widen before the spectacle which I 
picture. ‘‘So marched old Carén, the wizard,’’ she 
eries. ‘‘He marched to the music which his Indians 
made upon shells. And he danced. Will these men 
dance, too?’’ 

‘‘No, Rosaura. ... 


3 This is what happened there 
in the park.’’ 


40 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


They set up a stand and roofed all the square with 
the sails of ships. For days before the great occa- 
sion armed men patrolled the streets on foot and on 
horseback ; the guard on the forts was doubled, artil- 
lery was placed at the entrance of all streets leading 
to the park, and there soldiers guarded the Tribunal. 
Cartagena had never seen such preparations. 

At dawn on the day before the Auto de Fe, all 
was at last ready, and the moment had come to raise 
the standard of the Faith. There was music. Guns 
saluted. The ministers of the Holy Office appeared 
carrying their banner. There was clamor of fifes 
and of drums and of trumpets. And again there 
were the guns. 

At four o’clock on the afternoon of that same day 
the procession of the cross proceeded in solemn 
splendor through the city. It passed in pomp led 
by eight noblemen on horses, and it passed along 
streets gay with the flutter and color of flags, and 
thronged with the eager, curious population. 

The procession wound slowly back to the park, and 
the crowd herded after it. There, with impressive 
ritual, the cross was placed upon an altar in the 
stand prepared for the penitents, and throughout 
the night Dominican monks kept candles burning 
before it, while soldiers ceaselessly patrolled the 
streets. And who could have slept in the tense ex- 


GREEN CANDLES IN THE DAWN 41 


pectancy of that night before the celebration of the 
first Auto de Fe? 

The day broke. Dungeons were opened and peni- 
tents taken from their cells to be decked in the 
strange gear decreed by the Tribunal, and then con- 
ducted in ceremonious silent procession through the 
streets. They marched carrying green candles—the 
symbolic color of the Inquisition was green—and as 
they marched they seemed from time to time to 
stumble as though the mere weight of their feet were 
too great a burden. 

My story pauses while I contemplate the spectacle. 

‘‘Green candles in the dawn, Rosaura. Shadows 
of speechless victims . . . moving with slow effort 
in wretched procession; moving magnified on the 
walls of the houses which hem in the narrow streets. 
Green candles in the dawn. Shadow candles on the 
walls. Profound silence, heavy with pain.’’ 

‘‘See, seora! They have been tortured; tortured 
to make them confess. ”’ 

‘‘How do you know, Rosaura?’’ 

‘‘By their faces. There is a look. After torture 
there remains a look. I have seen it on Indians tor- 
tured to tell where gold is hidden. Oh, I know well 
the look!’’ 

But the story must go on, for upon that morning 
the ‘‘holy officers’’ passed also in parade; follow- 


42 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


ing the same streets along which had dragged that 
guarded file of ‘‘penitents’’ bearing the green 
candles which had flickered unsteadily, as though 
the hands that held them trembled. 

Thus they marched, back to the little square where 
all took the seats prepared for them in the stands; 
the two Inquisitors upon the dais; on the right and 
left the highest officials of the church and of the 
Tribunal; behind them the priors of the monasteries ; 
and behind them the captains of the garrisons. The 
prosecutor occupied a crimson velvet chair opposite 
the dais, and on his left was the secretary with his 
writing-table. 

When all were placed, the prior of Santo Domingo 
sang the mass, and a priest of the order of San 
Agustin delivered a sermon. The penitents listened, 
poor victims growing perhaps mercifully numb as 
the minutes crawled, becoming slowly indifferent to 
fate, waiting less anxiously for the final sentence. 

When at last the reading of the accusations began, 
it was after nine o’clock. And so detailed and so 
lengthy were those accusations that although they 
were read from two pulpits by four readers, night 
had come before all were finished. ! 

It was one of the longest days of the world, 
for a day is a variable matter. There are days which 
are evanescent moments, shiny moments; and there 


GREEN CANDLES IN THE DAWN 43 


are days so long and so racked with pain that at 
sunset may come old age. Among those long days 
was that of the first Auto de Fe in Cartagena. 

At that time it is said there was no public clock 
in the city, the hours being announced by soldiers 
ringing a bell in the streets. And as the soldiers 
were irregular, so were the hours. 

Upon the occasion of an Auto de Fe, the soldiers 
must have omitted altogether their uncertain ringing 
of the hours, so that only anguish could have marked 
the slow creep of time; while everlastingly the voices 
of the readers, mechanically ground out those in- 
terminable accusations of crime; the measured beat 
of sonorous Spanish syllables falling ponderously 
until, at last, night was descending. 

Still they read. They read thus: 


“Francisco Rodrigues Cabral, Portuguese; for having declared 
that in repeating the creed he had been taught to say ‘resurrected 
the dead’ instead of ‘resurrected from among: the dead,’ and for 
praying thus as he had been taught, a punishment of two hundred 
lashes and perpetual banishment from the Indies. 

“Antonio Bafion and Juana de Aranda, negro slaves; for blas- 
phemy, one hundred lashes each 

“Blas de Manjarres, mulatto tailor, for exclaiming, ‘Blessed be 
the Devil !’—lashes and exile.” 


And so forth and so forth and so forth. They 
were reading now by the light of torches. 








“Luis Andrea, mulatto, for the relating of marvelous tales 

“Maria Ramirez, a sorceress, for the telling of fortunes in the 
water, with the rosary and by the palms, two hundred lashes 
and exile.” 


44 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


On and on, the throbbing syllables falling upon 
tired, hopeless hearts. I seem to hear them fall, to 
see the flaring tapers and to feel the night breeze 
blowing from the sea, as sweet and cool as though 
no monotonous voices chanted sentences of lashes 
and imprisonment, slavery at the galleys and exile 
ye daBhes; er 

The words cut like whips. They make me know 
that Rosaura spoke truth. The torture, so incredible 
that it seems only to have existed in yellowed and 
musty pages, was a reality. It had been so dark a 
thing that it was seldom read from public pulpits. 
Flogging and exile, imprisonment, even burning in 
that open place outside the city which had come to 
be known as the ‘‘place of burning,’’ all these were 
with prodigious solemnity declared from pulpits; 
but the torture which left a ‘‘look,’’ that was a thing 
of dungeons in whose blackness stood instruments 
of horror, from which those who knew them never 
wholly recovered. 


‘‘But,’’ interrupts Rosaura in a_ trembling 
whisper. ‘‘But sefiora; Maria Ramirez... was 
there no one to save her? Once my mother was 
condemned, condemned you know, to be burned. It 
happened in Bogota. But there were rich men to 
save her. She had shown them wonderful things on 


GREEN CANDLES IN THE DAWN 45 


the water. And they saved her. Had this poor little 
Maria no one, sefora?”’ 

‘‘The books speak of no one, Rosaura. I have 
given you the facts as Saldanha gives them. He 
says only that upon the following day the sentences 
were executed in the plaza... .’’ 

Rosaura remains dumb, a shrinking terrified 
wraith. And I, too, am still; still with a horror 
which is warm and thick like blood. 

I have looked upon the Inquisition, but I do not yet 
understand. 


CHAPTER IV 
A SAINT 


OR relief I turn again to the life of the priest 
i Claver who was one day to be elevated to the 
rank of saint, Colombia’s saint. In following his 
rapid step along the narrow sidewalks, across dusty 
unpaved streets, choosing always the side where 
the sun blazed, in preference to the mercy of a strip 
of shade, because Claver’s God would have one 
mortify the flesh, I find myself first in a miserable 
hut where a slave is dying, or with Claver I accom- 
pany some forlorn creature to the gallows; and 
amazed I watch the strange comfort which Claver 
shed like a white light in those places of dark agony. 
It was known in Cartagena that under his robe 
Claver had cords of harsh horsehair wound tightly 
about his arms from wrist to shoulder, and that 
cords of horsehair bound his toes. Indeed, people 
said that for every part of his body he had invented 
some punishment, and everywhere was whispered 
the story of the nights which followed Claver’s 


active days. Even the children knew what happened 
46 


A SAINT A 


when he would retire to that room, at the head of the 
stairs on the left as you enter the convent; chosen 
as his room that he might be within easy call if any 
seeking a priest came knocking in the night. All 
knew that before lying down to rest Claver would 
scourge himself with chains of iron. They knew that 
at midnight he would rise to place a crown of thorns 
about his temples and a heavy cross on his back, and 
that he would then leave his cell to pass up and down 
the galleries, and around that patio, where in the 
sun he taught slaves to say, ‘‘I love Thee much, 
much... andmysoulis heavy... .”’ 

They knew that there in the darkness he would run 
to and fro, rending his shoulders with the scourge 
and calling upon God to pardon his sins. 

And all knew that again when the bells sounded 
to rouse the city Claver would once more lash his 
worn and wounded body. 

All considered that a man of such holiness must 
live in intimate communion with the heavenly world. 
It was rumored that he had prophesied one of the 
attacks by pirates, and even that he had raised the 
dead. Many thought that the mere touch of his cape 
worked miracles; for was not the fact that under his 
incessant toil and his self-inflicted tortures he lived 
at all, in itself a constant miracle? 

Therefore the comfort which Claver brought was 


48 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


felt to be authentic, since there was thus no doubt 
that he walked and talked with the very angels. 


These things my mind recounts to Rosaura, going 

sick-heartedly over the facts, thinking of how year 
by year the alert figure of the young Claver had 
aged and wasted, and of how deep in their hollow 
sockets the light of his great eyes had at last burned, 
burning always more see as though seen far off, 
through mist. 
In thinking of those nights which were multiplied 
by forty years, I forget to fancy the comments of 
Rosaura until suddenly the words come to me, ‘‘The 
priest’s God must have been pleased.”’ 

The priest’s God must have been pleased! 

I understand all at. once, in a flash of comprehen- 
sion, how Claver had endured the shocking spectacle 
of the Inquisition. In pleasing God nothing, of 
course, was too much or too terrible. None, he 
would argue, could be spared. In the toil of day or 
the pain of night he did not spare himself. 

I begin at last to understand. 

The explanation of that ghastly Inquisition I see 
lies in the kind of God which man had made for him- 
self, in the image which he had molded and set upon 
an altar. 

In that Cartagena of the sixteenth and seven- 


SS a ee ee eee a J 





THE HOUSE OF THE INQUISITION 





A SAINT 49 


teenth centuries there was assembled the super- 
stition of Europe, of Africa, and of America. 
Rosaura and her adventures were realities. Satan 
was everywhere. Even Claver was said often to use 
his scourge to drive him from his cell. Everybody 
believed in everything. 

Spain believed not only in her own miracles but 
in the miracles of Africa and of this newly dis- 
covered America, with the difference that her mira- 
cles were holy and of God, while theirs she con- 
demned and feared as the vile and dangerous work 
of Satan. As for America and Africa, they believed 
so much that inevitably they easily credited the 
miracles of priests and of images. Anything was 
possible. 

The poor fogged brain of man was as in a black 
tunnel groping its way toward the distant patch of 
light which is its exit. And we in three hundred 
years have come so far and so fast that when I re- 
trace our steps back to Claver and to the Inquisition 
I am mute before the pity of that dark time when 
man in all sincerity fashioned for himself a cruel 
God and then sought to propitiate him. 

Claver had emphasized love. With that message 
he had gone down into the foul hold of slave-ships. 
Yet he had thought to please God by self-adminis- 
tered pain. 


50 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Looking back upon the clouded brain of that man- 
kind only three hundred years younger than our- 
selves, I see the piteous efforts to believe in love, the 
struggle to convince itself. It was so much easier 
to follow the trail of tradition, so hard not to fear 
the evil mischief of Satan, the pranks of demons and 
the wrath of God. 

Love was on the lips, but fear still gripped the 
heart. Fear... In that age of superlative physi- 
cal courage when man dared all things in the visible 
world, bold and confident and strong, with his hand 
quick to draw the sword, before the unseen he 
trembled full of fear; he cowered before the super- 
natural. He felt all about him a crowding and 
invisible population, against which his might was of 
no avail. And he feared—he feared all that he could 
not see. He feared witchcraft and sorcery, demons 
and spirits. He saw them materially manifested 
everywhere, in snakes or in goats, in rocks and 
trees. They spoke to him in thunder. They con- 
trolled the sea. They punished with pestilence. And 
he feared. He feared greatly. 

But man had his God. In his infinite need he 
turned to that God. He talked of the love for which 
his heart yearned, but he could not banish the 
shadow of his dread. He would therefore devise 
propitiations. He would be good. He would keep 


A SAINT 51 


himself pure. He would confess, and he would re- 
peat endless prayers and burn candles, countless 
candles. Yet still he feared. 

He would fast and scourge himself. He would 
punish all who doubted or offended his God. 

So at last he hoped to win safety and glory, not 
here, but in the life to come. 


During the first days of September, 1654, Claver 
was waiting to enter into that long-hoped-for glory. 

In August he had said to his friend, Nicolas 
Gonzalez, ‘‘I think it will come on one of the fiestas 
of the Holy Virgin.’’ 

‘‘And with what a harvest of souls you go, 
padre!’’ 

‘*Ah,no! No, Ihave lost all. Through impatience 
with this illness I have lost all.’’ 

The illness of which Claver spoke with deep tears 
of remorse had been to him four years of living 
death. Paralysis of the hands and feet had made 
him helpless. His body had been shaken with ner- 
vous tremblings. He had suffered much pain, and 
with it all had come persistent and bitter melancholy. 

He had contracted this mortal disease in nursing 
a plague which had fallen upon the city. And now 
in his profound depression he fancied that it was his 
sins which had brought the pest to Cartagena. 


52 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


In those four years he had known no rest. He 
had had himself carried in the arms of negro slaves 
from death-bed to death-bed, that he might console 
the dying, and never had he abandoned the punish- 
ment of his body. 

But now when he saw how soon it would all be 
over, his drawn face began to take on an astonishing 
radiance. 

‘‘Brother Nicolds,’’ he called feebly as he passed 
the sacristy, borne for the last time from prayer in 
the church to the cell where he was to die. ‘‘Brother 
Nicolas, I am dying. Is there anything I can do for 
you in the other life?”’ 

‘‘Only that you commend to God, me, this city, and 
this house.’’ 

Later Nicolas came with a list of many persons 
who wished Claver’s personal intercession above. 

‘Will you sign here, padre,’’ said Nicolas. “We 
want your signature that you will carry these names 
to God.’’ 

‘‘Here? . . . It would be better, Nicolas, that I 
sign further down. You may want to add other 
names.”’ 

With an unquestioning assurance Claver thus 
signed, pledging himself to execute commissions in 
heaven. 

And then he slipped from consciousness to uncon- 


A SAINT 53 


sciousness, from pain to peace; that soft slipping 
which is so often the last earthly sensation. 

In that flickering border-land where consciousness 
dims, fleeting bits of thought come and go. As 
Claver’s consciousness slowly faded, fragments of 
memory must have passed. 

There was the list, his last earthly obligation, the 
names of those for whom he had undertaken to inter- 
cede—the list without doubt passed across the veiled 
film of his brain. And with it there was of course 
Nicolas who had requested, ‘‘Commend to God, me, 
this city, and this house.’’ 

Further and further away, fainter and fainter this 
list became, as a figure walking down a long black 
corridor passes from sight. So, too, Nicolas wan- 
dered off into littleness and nothingness, leaving be- 
hind him the echo of his, ‘‘ Here, padre, this is where 
you sign—’’ 

What was that about a list and signing? He must 
sign . . . but his fingers would not move. Queer. 
They were stone fingers. Yet he seemed to be writ- 
ing. He could even see what he had written. He 
saw the words, ‘‘slave of the slaves until death.’’ 

The writing then faded. Everything faded. Soon 
no one could read it. What a pity—that it should 
not be read! ... 

‘¢But it will be,’’ a voice infinitely far off was 


54 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


whispering. ‘‘It will be. They will read it when 
. when you are seated . . . on the throne... . 
Pedro, most dear brother of my life.’’ 

Some one was calling him Pedro. Why had the 
other some one said ‘‘padre’’? Pedro! Yes, of 
course, that was his name. He was young Pedro, 
serving his novitiate at Mallorca in Spain. And it 
was Alonso, the old doorkeeper, who spoke; Alonso 
who all day tended the door and all day told his 
beads. 


What was Alonso saying so far away?... He 
was speaking to him. He was saying?... ‘‘Pedro 
. most dear brother of my life. . . I have seen 

- in a’vibion' 2". 7’ 


The voice trailed off and disappeared down a dark 
passage just as the other voice had done. 

Was it a list that Alonso had seen? And was he 
about to say, ‘‘Padre, here you sign’’? Some one 
had said that... . Who? 

Not Alonso, for there was now no list; and he, 
Pedro Claver, was not yet a padre. He was young 
and still under his probation. 

But where was the strength of youth? Why was 
he so utterly weak? Strange! He did not remem- 
ber ever to have felt thus weak. 

Now the voice had returned, the voice of Alonso 


A SAINT 55 


who all day muttered over his beads and at night saw 
visions. Alonso’s voice was speaking: 

‘‘Pedro, in a vision I saw a throne which was 
empty. ‘For whom is this throne?’ I asked, and 
thus was I answered: ‘It is prepared for thy dis- 
ciple, Claver, as a reward for the souls which he 
will win for God in the Indies.’ ’’ 

Ah, he had heard those words . . . many times 
. . . long ago in Mallorca... . 

But now, as he slipped deeper and further, all was 
dark, and where were the words in the dark? Dear 
familiar words. Let them... not go... Dear 
words, faint and far.... ‘‘When... When you 
are seated ...on your throne... prepared in 
Pewerd. Fearoe ..1: brother’... 7’ 


These things must have passed, for of such were 
the memories of his life. — 


And then there were children crying in the street | 
outside, but Claver did not hear them. They were 
erying: ‘‘The saint is dying! The saint is dying!’’ 

But Claver did not hear. He did not even know 
that it was the birthday of the Virgin. 

The news spread. Negroes hurried, mourning as 
they ran. They would kiss for the last time the hand 
that had been to them as the hand of a father. From 
all directions rich and poor, white and black, all 


56 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


hastened, mourning. They forced the doors which 
the priests had closed. They crowded about the bed. 

But Claver did not feel their tears. Moment by 
moment he was gently slipping away. 


The throng came again to the church, surrounding 
his coffin. In pressing about it, they looked upon 
Death. And all at once fear possessed them, that 
strange blind credulous fear of three hundred years 
ago. 

It flared in them like a sudden flame. They pressed 
closer, closer. They must have help for their fear. 
Like flame their fear fed upon itself. They felt the 
air vibrate with a terror which beat upon them like 
wings. They must have help. They pressed in hot 
panic about the coffin. 

In the church there was peace only in the still 
face of Claver, from which death had magically 
smoothed all trace of pain. 

But the panting, pressing mourners had forgotten 
the pale sweet majesty of his face. They feared, and 
in their fear they snatched the brocaded vestment 
which covered Claver. They tore it into shreds, for 
the smallest scrap would be a talisman to ward off 
evils. It might even work miracles. Anything was 
possible. 

To protect the very corpse itself, the priests 


A SAINT 57 


brought out the pillow upon which Claver had died. 
Every hair of it was priceless, and those who had not 
secured a scrap of the vestment were determined 
to possess a hair of the pillow. In order further to 
appease the mob, the sacristan mounted the pulpit, 
from which he distributed great numbers of seals, 
which Claver had had made to present to those whom 
he confessed. 

And while the throng surged about the pulpit 
Claver’s coffin was slid into the niche which awaited 
it. 

In that wraith of a throng fighting for ghostly | 
seals of confession, distributed by a phantom sacris- 
tan, I left my sorceress friend Rosaura. She was 
eagerly mingling with the unearthly mob, for 
Rosaura, too, believed in charms and would obtain a 
talisman against ills. 

I had succeeded in bringing Rosaura over with me 
into the seventeenth century, but I knew I could 
carry her no further. I was moving on through the 
march of time, and she could not follow. 

I had shown her Colombia’s saint, but she would 
never comprehend its Liberator. Her mind would 
never grasp the freeing of slaves. Nor could I ever 
make her see the ships which were to steam into the 
blue sparkle of the bay, dwarfing the empty forts of 
the Boca Chica. 


58 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Thus I left her. I would miss her bracelets and 
her smile. Also I would miss her comments, for I 
had liked seeing through sorceress eyes which were 
four hundred years younger than my own. I was 
sorry, but so intent was Rosaura in the struggle to 
secure a new and potent charm that she did not even 
see that I was going. 


CHAPTER V 
SACRED REMAINS 


HE doorkeeper left us waiting in the reception- 
T room while he pattered off in search of the 
padre to whom we had a letter of introduction. And 
if you have ever waited in the reception-room of any 
Spanish-American convent or monastery, you have 
waited in them all; for there will always be the same 
bare floor, the same high ceiling and white walls. 
Always straight hard wooden chairs will be set 
stiffly about; and always the great whitewashed wall 
spaces will be broken by occasional holy pictures; 
sometimes a dark old painting, age-dimmed; some- 
times a chromo of crude blatant color; both types 
often being found side by side, as though the subject 
rather than the execution were the important thing. 

And in such a room you will always be kept wait- 
ing while some doorkeeper with clinking rosary and 
soft-shod feet goes off with your card, disappearing 
into what seems a limitless realm of quiet, while you 
are left to wait, and, waiting, lose all sense of 


time,... 
59 


60 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


It was not until later that I realized how this visit 
to the church and to the cloisters of San Pedro 
Claver was to bridge the distance between those 
long-past days of the sorceress and the present 
moment in the year 1924 of our transient existence; 
the visit, as it were, forming a half-way house where 
we might pause for breath, breaking the past-to- 
present journey, and arriving quite easily at to-day. 

But this I did not yet comprehend as, waiting, I 
gazed dreamily through the big wide doorway, 
through the arched corridor, and out into the patio, 
where the priest, Claver, had with so tireless a 
patience taught slaves to make the sign of the cross 
and to repeat many times over the words, ‘‘I love 
Thee, much... much... much’’; where, too, in 
the night he had run with thorns about his temples 
and a cross on his back, scourging himself as he 
implored pardon for his sins. 

Waiting for the padre, to whom we had a letter, 
I looked out upon this patio, in which the long lan- 
guid leaves of a banana-plant drooped green against 
an old gray wall. They were motionless leaves, and 
even the sharply contrasting spots of light and 
shadow which lay under the arches and upon the 
walls, they, too, were still. Only the high-raised 
head of a palm gently rustled. 

And then all at once the padre had come. One 


SACRED REMAINS 61 


minute we had been vaguely waiting, and the next 
minute he was there; a little breathless, as though 
he had come a long way—spiritually and emotion- 
ally, perhaps, a long way. He had possibly been 
discovered in the isolation of his devotions and 
thus had had to bring himself back with effort to 
visitors waiting in the reception-room. 

The padre was black-robed, with a little square 
black hat topped by a rosette of silk fringe, and he 
had the slightly hollow-chested look which the 
tightly buttoned Jesuit gown gives to a slender man; 
while the feet protruding from beneath his robe 
seemed, like all priests’ feet, extraordinarily large 
and masculine in contradiction to their skirts. 

The padre entered with just that hint of flurry 
and in his hands was the letter in which we were 
recommended to his attention. 

‘“My friend writes,’’ he said interrogatively, ‘‘that 
the sefiora is especially interested in our saint, 
Pedro Claver?’’ 

Yes, I was interested. Even in Spanish I could 
be fluent if the subject were Claver. I was inter- 
ested. In a shop in Cartagena I had found the 
padre’s life of Claver. I wanted to talk about it 

. and to see the church. 

And immediately the look of having come a long 

way left the padre; for we met upon a plane where 


62 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


it was his habit to live. He became eager, his speech 
rapid. 

So I had read his book! It was a pity that I had 
bought it. He would have been happy to present 
it to me. But he had photographs . . . of immense 
interest, and a little book of prayers to the saint. 
They were mine. 

And he spread out on the center-table photographs 
of Cartagena and photographs of old paintings 
taken from portraits, of Alonso through whose 
visions Claver three hundred years ago had been in- 
fluenced to dedicate his life to the slaves of Colombia, 
and photographs from paintings of Claver himself 
—Claver at the dock receiving the slaves, and Claver 
catechizing his converts. There were photographs 
also of his room, of the view from his window, and 
of the church in which he had worshiped. The 
padre had been for years collecting them. He laid 
them before us, as one who shares precious treasures, 
confident of sympathy. 

‘¢And now’’—rising as he spoke—‘‘if you will 
come—”’ 

We followed him up the short wide flight of stairs 
on the left of the reception-room, mounting to the 
room which opens off the landing, the room so long 
ago chosen by Claver because there the doorkeeper 
could easily summon him. 


SACRED REMAINS 63 


And as we went, the padre talked all the time, very 
fast, as though he did not often have new listeners. | 

‘“‘This, mi sevora, is the room. Here, two hun- 
dred and sixty-nine years ago, took place the most 
precious death of our saint.’? 

We looked about us, at whitewashed walls, at the 
altar which had been erected at one end of the room, 
and over to the side where two small windows faced 
the bay. 

‘‘He watched always for the slave-ships,’’ the 
Padre was saying. ‘‘Hrom these windows he could 
see them far off, so that he had time to beg gifts with 
which to greet the slaves.’’ 

The bay lay blue and lovely like a jewel in the sun, 
catching the light and giving it back in a myriad 
sparkles. All that was ugly in the past seemed an 
impossible nightmare in the azure peace of the 
present. 

But the padre was still speaking. He was saying 
that for long the location of Claver’s room had been 
lost—forgotten. The Jesuits had been expelled from 
Spain and from all her colonies, as, of course, I must 
know. This had happened more than a hundred 
years ago. ‘‘A sad, sad time, senora. Our religious 
house passed then into the hands of the monks of 
San Juan de Dios, and, later, from the possession 
of the king into the control of the republic. 


64 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘‘During the Revolution the church was used as a 
barracks, as an armory, even as a public market. 

‘‘Tmagine for yourself, sefora, here in these holy 
places, the profanation; the speech of shame taking 
the place of prayer and sacred ceremony. Imagi- 
nese, mt senora!l’’ 

‘‘But, after all, padre, it was the Revolution that 
started the movement to free Claver’s slaves.’’ 

‘‘Yes, for God is great. We need only patience 

. . only patience. 

‘‘Meanwhile, through the years, the remains of 
our Claver lay silent in their niche in one of the 
columns; silent, but not altogether neglected— 
gracias 4 Dids! For at the foot of the column, they 
tell us, was placed a little table upon which a tiny 
oil-lamp never ceased to burn, fed and tended by the 
old negress Concepcion. 

‘‘Eivery day she would come to the church, enter 
quietly, and, ignoring the vulgar jokes of the sol- 
diers, she would replenish the oil in the lamp. And 
then, after praying for a moment before the tomb 
of her apostle, she would go away, to return on the 
following day. 

‘‘As for the soldiers, they did not destroy her 
lamp. They found it useful for lighting their pipes. 

‘‘So was the tomb remembered, although in the 








THE PATIO OF SAN PEDRO CLAVER 


SACRED REMAINS 65 


confusion the very identity of Claver’s room was 
forgotten. 

‘‘Nevertheless, the friends of Claver were all this 
time busy. Fifteen years after his death the city of 
Cartagena appealed to the Holy See, begging his 
canonization. Seventy-eight years later, upon es- 
tablished proof of his virtues in heroic degree, Pope 
Benedict XIV approved this appeal. 

‘‘Passed then, sefora, one hundred years more; 
but is not God great? After confirmation of four 
miracles of the third order, performed by Claver 
in Cartagena, Pope Pius IX numbered him among 
the blessed. 

‘‘But there yet remained to prove two miracles 
wrought by his relics; and these two miracles, 
senora, were performed in your own United States; 
one in a city which you call San Luis, no? And the 
other in Milwaukee. 

‘‘So two hundred and thirty-three years after his 
death—years of many petitions to the Vatican—all 
conditions had been met, and under Leo XIII Claver 
was at last placed among the saints.’’ 

I was about to express amazement that it should 
require so much propaganda to make a saint a saint; 
but again, lit with that profound inner enthusiasm, 
the padre was speaking: 


66 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘¢And upon the same day, Alonso also was added 
to the saints!’’ 

It was wonderful to him that Alonso and Claver, 
who had been so inseparable in the long past days, 
far away in Mallorca, should upon the same day 
have been united in the pomp and majesty of saint- 
hood. 

And his voice trembled deep with feeling: ‘‘Now 
—now our Claver is San Pedro Claver!’’ 

He had much to tell of the gorgeous celebrations 
in honor of the new saint, Claver. And we were to 
‘imagine for ourselves’’ the great cost and labor of 
restoring the Jesuit church in Cartagena, now re- 
named in honor of Claver. We were to imagine the 
filth and refuse which lay foot-deep upon its floor 
and the blasphemous inscriptions scrawled upon its 
walls. 

But there had come, he said, ‘‘two men, chosen 
of God to restore this temple’’—Bishops of Carta- 
gena sent out from Italy, the second taking up the 
work where the first had laid it down. 

‘‘Marvelous and unexpected were the ways of the 
All-Powerful!’’ 


Pedro was thus now canonized and his church re- 
stored, but that was still not enough. There re- 
mained the renovation of the ancient residence of the 


SACRED REMAINS 67 


Jesuits adjoining the church, a residence for forty 
years ‘‘perfumed by the heroic virtues’’ of Claver. 
‘“‘This accomplished, it was presented to us, the 
Jesuits, and after a hundred years of banishment we 
returned once more to our house and to our church!’’ 
Again he would have me ‘‘imagine for myself,’’ 
giving me a pause before he continued: 

‘‘Understanding our troubled history, you see how 
it came about that the knowledge of Claver’s little 
room was lost in the passing of those disastrous 
years.’’ Forgotten for a space only, to be one day 
miraculously discovered through the finding of a 
stone slab upon which was cut out the inscription, 
‘<In this room died the venerable P. Pedro Claver, 
the 8th day of September, 1654.’’ The slab had fitted 
exactly into a vacant niche in the wall outside the 
door of a small room on the first landing as the stairs 
mount. 

‘‘Convenient for the portero, and looking over the 
bay up which slave-ships once sailed, this room cor- 
roborated all the fragmentary facts handed down.’’ 

Its discovery, the padre added, had been made in 
the year 1917, the very year when the Holy See had 
increased the honors of Claver by naming him 
Patron of the Republic. And this title the padre 
felt had been so pleasing to Claver that as a sign of 
his gratification he had made known, through the 


68 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


finding of the slab, which was the room sanctified by 
his virtues and glorified by his death. 


And as he spoke I gradually realized that all this 
made up the drama of the padre’s life. 

He had perhaps an infrequent memory, warm but 
rarely recalled, of his childhood in the interior city 
of Medellin. This I inferred because, in discussing 
our itinerary, he had said with an affectionate de- 
tachment, ‘‘I hope you will go to Medellin, for that 
is my city.”’ 

But he had passed on at once to further talk of 
Claver. 

The padre would, I reflected, have known Medellin 
in the days before the railroad, when the plaza was 
full of mules, arriving and departing caravans. 
The life and stir must have fascinated a small boy, 
for a plaza crowded with incoming and outgoing 
caravans of mules can never be anything but a place 
of delightful commotion; such are the endless possi- 
bilities of mules. 

But this childhood had soon been put away to 
make room for the priestly education, to walk up and 
down under the purple flowering trees of the uni- 
versity, studying aloud, pacing under the trees. 

And then had come the great enthusiasm, the de- 
votion to Pedro Claver, which was revealed in his» 


SACRED REMAINS 69 


eager gestures, his hurrying sentences, and in his 
lighted eyes. 

In us all, dramas are going on more or less hidden 
behind the mask of faces, secret thrilling dramas 
whose unfolding is our life and whose dénouement 
is our death. 

It is rare that an individual human drama be- 
comes so impersonal that it lies outside one’s self. 
Yet this padre lived in the life of a long-dead saint, 
living so without self-consciousness that all his 
drama could be poured into the ears of strangers, 
with a freedom from restraint sufficiently complete 
to give the impression that no smallest thing was 
held back, that this was truly the drama, and that 
there was nothing else. 

An impersonality thus entire is bewildering. Is it 
something, I wondered, which is destroyed by mo- 
dernity? My mind ran over the people whose lives 
I knew to some extent intimately. Had I seen it in 
any of these lives? No, there had been nothing 
which approached it. Perhaps it is most nearly 
achieved in absorption in creative work—artistic, 
scientific, or inventive. Yet even there it is often 
confused with ever so many highly personal quali- 
ties; with envy, with a craving for wealth, or fame, 
or power. 

But the padre was infinitely simple, and we—of 


10 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


another civilization—we, all of us by comparison, — 
enormously complex. 

Here was I, for example, with part of me deeply 
interested in the story of Claver; part of me ab- 
sorbed in analyzing the padre who was telling me 
the story; not to mention what far things other 
brain-cells might be busy about. While the padre— 
the padre knew a singleness of emotion. 

Nothing to him was of importance except the 
church, concretely represented in the life of Claver. 
He had alluded to one of the attacks by pirates. 
That attack had been a lurid experience for Carta- 
gena. But to the padre it was significant only be-— 
cause a bomb had destroyed the altar before which 
Claver worshiped. The Revolution—he had men- 
tioned the Revolution simply as it had affected 
Claver’s church, Claver’s room and Claver’s re- 
mains. History was merely a plot in which moved 
the character of Pedro Claver. 

And as the padre led the way down the stairs, 
under the arched gallery and across the patio to the 
church, he was still recounting the ‘‘blesséd 
miracle’’ of identifying the room. 

I knew that we were being taken to the church 
to look upon the skeleton of the saint, and I knew 
that I would follow the padre, and yet I felt an 
extreme reluctance. 


SACRED REMAINS 71 


It seemed a gruesome liberty to go and look upon 
his bones. I had recoiled from the mere written 
description of those exhumed remains. The Claver 
whom I had pictured had nothing at all to do with 
the carefully enumerated bones which Cartagena 
had retained for itself and which I found listed: 

‘“‘The cranium intact, one shoulder-blade, one 
humerus, one radius, the sternum, four carpal bones, 
three metacarpals,’’ and so on and so on. 

No, these scientifically listed bones did not rep- 
resent to me Pedro Claver. 

Yet, because the eager padre expected it, I fol- 
lowed. Together we stood outside the church door, 
the door which opens into the cloistered patio, and 
the padre pulled a cord, ringing the bell which hung 
above the door. The bell gave one sudden little peal 
and then stopped, as though frightened at having so 
abruptly broken the peace without even a prelimi- 
nary tinkle. Its cord was still trembling when it 
was answered in the person of a diminutive replica 
of the padre; a man smaller and more fragile, almost 
an elfin priest buttoned tightly in the long black 
eassock which narrows the shoulders and hollows the 
chest. 

Silently he produced a great key, with which he 
opened and let us into the cool calm of the church. 
The hour was noon and the outer doors closed, so 


72 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


that we had all to ourselves the dim desertion. 
Hiven the altar-candles were not burning, and there 
was only the sunlight streaming through stained 
glass; filtering through the deep reds and purples 
and yellows of stained glass; streaming in painted 
shafts of light into the still cool dark. 

It did not seem possible that here soldiers had 
once had their noisy barracks. 

But the black figure which had answered the sum- 
mons of the bell was indicating that we should follow 
as he led the way to the altar through alternating 
spaces of shadow and of soft, drifting colored light. 

The altar, the padre whispered, was symbolic. 
There were the sculptured shields of Pope Leo XIII 
and of that Italian Bishop of Cartagena who had 
done so much for the glory of Claver. There, above 
the cornice, were angels in the act of presenting 
garlands of roses to the new saint, the roses typify- 
ing the loveliness of his virtues. There were other 
angels rejoicing in the elevation of this Apostle of 
the Slaves, with Claver himself, represented in his 
sublime exaltation, with his eyes raised toward 
Heaven. We must notice, the padre said, that the 
saint’s hands were crossed over his breast, because 
there dwelt the divine love, filling his heart. 

And these things were pictured in marble—white 
marble, red-veined marble, and green marble. 


SACRED REMAINS 73 


‘Most beautiful and symbolic,’’ whispered the 
padre. ‘‘All is symbolic.’’ 

And now the slim black figure which had left us 
at the altar reappeared, bringing two short white 
candles. With a swift low prostration he stepped 
forward to lift the lacy altar-cloth which hung over 
what I knew would prove to be the urn containing 
those classified bones of the saint, Claver. 

The cloth was raised . . . and there revealed was 
the urn: no longer than a child’s coffin, as though 
the listed bones had been laid, not in the formation 
of life, but telescoped to fit the urn which was of 
erystal and gold, held in the hands of two little 
winged figures. 

“‘Un craneo intacto’’? ... My memory reiterated 
the words of the description. 

But the black figure was placing a candle in front 
of the urn, on the platform of the altar. The candle 
was lit, and in its unsteady flicker I saw... 
through the glass of the urn, I saw ‘‘a skull com- 
plete’’, exactly as the list had stated; a skull resting 
upon a pillow of white lustrous satin embroidered 
elaborately in gold, while up to the chin of the skull 
was drawn a coverlet of white, similarly incrusted 
with gold. 

None of the other bones were visible. Presumably 
they were assembled under the coverlet. Only the 


14 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


head was to be seen, as it lay upon the pillow; not 
the grinning skull of physiology class-rooms, but a 
delicately formed skull lying on its pillow in a cer- 
tain reposeful majesty. 

And then I started, for there was a movement 
behind the altar, the lifting of a cloth and the ap- 
pearing of that slender black form which had so far 
not uttered a word. It appeared in order to place 
and light another candle, this time on the opposite 
side of the transparent urn. 

The living figure vanished, leaving us to contem- 
plate the urn of gold and crystal wherein lay a skull 
upon satin, with satin drawn up under its chin. In 
the faint quiver of the two candles it lay in a still- 
ness so eternal that even the padre no longer whis- 
pered about beauty and symbolism, marble and 
sculpture. 

Yet the skull lying there in the urn... that 
surely was symbolic. 

It was not gruesome, as I had feared. It was not 
even grim. It was solemn... final. . . mexor- 
able. But, above all, it was quiet beyond all possi- 
bility of disturbance. 

From time to time through the years people would 
come, as we had come; and lighted candles would be 
placed upon the floor briefly to illumine it. And 
then the altar-cloth would be dropped, and the 


SACRED REMAINS 75 


people would go softly away. While the skull lay 
forever motionless on its satin pillow. 

Standing before it, we seemed in contrast palpi- 
tatingly alive, almost ostentatiously alive; part of a 
tense and quivering life passed down the long line 
of generations, seemingly endless generations; with 
here and there an individual like the padre, whose 
drama lay outside himself; the padre with his 
evident selflessness of emotion, living in the life of 
a long-dead saint. 

When my eyes strayed from what was left of 
Claver to the living padre beside me, I saw that he 
was backing away from the altar. He seemed aston- 
ishingly tall, buttoned to the throat in his tight black 
gown; and he had thrown his arms out and back 
in a gesture of humility and devotion, in an abandon 
of surrender; while on his face was a light that did 
not come from candles, nor from tinted sunlight 
streaming through stained windows. 

Thus the padre moved back across the platform 
and down through the chancel gate, the heavy soft- 
shod feet under his robe needing no guidance, 
unerringly finding their accustomed way. 

Then out of the shadows came a living shadow to 
‘drop again the altar-cloth, to extinguish and take 
away the half-burned candles from which wax 
dripped, hot and sticky. 


76 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


When we returned to the stiff wooden chairs of 
the reception-room, it was strange to find that 
sharply outlined patches of light and shade were 
still patterned under the cloisters; so long a time 
did we seem to have passed in the dim wonder of 
the church. Yet all was the same: chairs and sun- 
light and languorous banana-leaves brightly green 
against a wall gray with age. 

The little man who had attended us in the church 
now brought fine old sherry from Spain and served 
it to us in thin, delicately chased glasses; and with 
it there were round, faintly sweet biscuit—Albert 
biscuit from England. And it was like drinking of 
new life to sip the warm glowing sherry. 

But the padre’s glass stood untouched, until the 
attending black robe moved forward and with a little 
gesture of pleading and of love indicated it, as 
though the wearer of the robe grieved that the padre 
should not share in the fiesta of sherry and biscuit. 

And the padre, smiling, raised the glass to his lips, 
only to replace it still untouched upon the table; 
evidently fancying that we did not notice; but, ob- 
serving, I recalled that in the little room on the left 
as you mount the stairs, in that little room with its 
memories of passionate pain, the padre had said to 
me, ‘‘ Ah, sefora, Claver was very mortificado.”’ 


SACRED REMAINS (a 


In a moment we would go away, out through the 
heavy great doors with their iron bolts, out into the 
varied and complex world; while the padre would 
thus live on in the life of his saint, daily reflecting 
that life in countless such small mortifications. 

And when the ponderous doors closed upon him 
as we stepped from the convent-cool into our wait- 
ing carriage, whose back and seats burned under 
Cartagena’s midday sun, my mind was still pre- 
occupied with the little scene of renunciation, while 
I hoped that sterner mortifications belonged to the 
past. 


CHAPTER VI 
STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 


ATE had sent us a coachman. Not that there 
}' was any lack of coachmen in Cartagena, 
coachmen lolling in the drivers’ seats of the more 
or less dilapidated victorias which awaited patrons. 
But these coachmen were coachmen merely, negli- 
gible quantities whose hands controlled reins and 
occasionally brandished whips. 

During our first days in Cartagena we had stepped 
indifferently into whichever of these disengaged 
vehicles happened to be standing in front of the 
hotel. And then Fate sent a special coachman to 
whom the manipulation of reins was a trivial detail 
in a calling which he made as colorful as a prism. 

Sitting in his high seat, his brown circular face 
broadly smiling, he was throwing merry salutations 
to passing acquaintances, at the same time that he 
carried on a lively conversation with a hotel em- 
ployee lounging in the doorway. And he was as 
eager about our drive as though he, too, had come 
nearly two thousand miles to visit for the first time 
that little walled city on the shores of the Caribbean. 

78 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 79 


And I knew immediately that once more Fate had 
provided a medium through which I might enter into 
the spirit of a new land; seeing to some extent 
through native eyes; much as I had participated in 
the spirit of sixteenth-century Spanish America by 
means of my fantastic visualization of Rosaura, the 
sorceress. 

Interpretative mediums are essential in the com- 
prehension of an unfamiliar land. And they are not 
to be found among the cosmopolitan who are no 
longer typical, who have lost the distinctive flavor 
of the soil; but they must be sought among the 
simpler inhabitants, among coachmen and _boot- 
blacks, itinerant monks and villagers, among all 
chance acquaintances of the road with whom one 
drifts quite naturally and happily into friendship. 

In this search it is necessary to put one’s own per- 
sonality to sleep, nicely out of the way, and in that 
receptive state to await the bounty of Fate; alertly 
receptive, for one may never even guess in what 
form interpretation will come. For it by no means 
always appears in human guise but is often a com- 
bination of many small things; the fragment of a 
song, the cry of an animal in the forest, the swirl of 
a shadowy reflective river, or a heavy iron-studded 
door closed to the world. A wing-clipped bird com- 
manded by a child may symbolize the life of a states- 


80 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


man. Or it may be that in the contemplation of a 
saint’s skull lying upon satin will swiftly come the 
coveted flash of revelation. 

And it is in the sum of these revelations that the 
final interpretation lies, for observation, however 
detailed and accurate, is an imperfect and inade- 
quate thing without revelation. 

Thus in suspense I wait upon Fate, finding in the 
very uncertainty concerning the form of her mani- 
festation, finding even in the anxiety lest after all 
this time she fail me, a large part of the adventuring 
lure of strange journeyings. 

But the instant that I am confronted with the 
medium, or with the revelation, all uncertainty 
vanishes. I recognize beyond doubt the instrument. 
through which I am to be permitted to share the 
spirit of a new land. 

Thus in the case of this coachman of Fate it was 
at once apparent that he possessed the essential 
awareness of his environment, that he was respon- 
sive and without self-consciousness. I would look 
with him upon his world... . 

To his carriage we had returned after that visit 
to the Church of San Pedro Claver, that visit in 
which we had found material testimony to the reality 
of the past. And, gathering up the reins, he had 
broken off with a bystander to inquire whether we 





THE SPIRIT OF CARTAGENA 





STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 81 


had seen ‘‘the most precious relics’’ and visited the 
room of the saint; for he was ever solicitous that we 
miss nothing. 

In his coach I was to pass much of my time in 
present-day Cartagena. Undisturbed in the shadow 
of its dark hood, I was to watch life flow through the 
streets, discussing occasionally that life with this 
medium provided by Fate. 


In the hotel we rose with the day, knowing that 
we must take advantage of every moment of the 
brief cool dawn before the sun parched the little 
shadeless streets with a heat so tangible that all 
one’s senses seemed aware of it, a heat which came 
on so quickly that our preparations for the day de- 
veloped into a race against the sun. 

To this hurrying dawn-cool belonged the vender 
of mangos, memorable because he was so unlike any 
one else in Cartagena. His cry would come up from 
the street below; the most imperative cry, a re- 
echoing command which even at that distance I 
scarcely dared disobey. His imperious voice an- 
nounced that his mangos were of the sweetness of 
sugar and that they were five cents a dozen. He 
made that simple statement many times over in a 
voice such as a king might have affected in the days 
of divine rights. 


82 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


His voice filled the narrow street and rose to 
overflow the rooms and halls of the hotel. He never 
added anything to his original declaration. He 
never urged purchases, his peremptory voice seem- 
ing to take them for granted. His was a voice which 
emphasized the resonant strength of the Spanish 
tongue rather than its musical romantic character. 
Where there was accentuation his voice underscored 
it; vowels were broadened and stressed, and con- 
sonants were staccato. 

Every day at the same hour, with no slightest 
variation of manner or of substance, this mango- 
seller passed under my balcony like the incarnation 
of such psychological principles as the power of 
repetition and the magnetism of confidence. 

Thus he cried, sounding that emphatic note which 
had no counterpart in the gentle lazy dawn: 

‘‘Mangos de azucar! Cinco centavos por do- 
cena!’’—crying with his a’s all strongly broad, and 
the final syllables of each phrase infinitely pro- 
longed. 

In spite of our race with the sun, I could never 
resist running out on the balcony to watch him, as 
he passed, slowly following his donkey in the middle 
of the street. And even that donkey had the air of 
a donkey of affairs, quite unlike the casual beast of 
the tropics. 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 83 


Indeed, watching, from the balcony, this intimate 
couple, it seemed almost as though it were the don- 
key who indicated down which street they should 
turn. 

With the passing of these partners the stentorian 
announcement of the sugar-sweetness of their 
mangos sounded ever fainter, but always, even in 
the diminuendo of distance, it was emphatic. 

It was perhaps because of my gazing after man 
and donkey mango-sellers that we never won in our 
race against the coming of heat; never, although we 
ordered tea earlier and earlier until at last we 
reached the limit even of mulatto Alfonso’s good 
nature. We advanced also the hour of the coach- 
man’s arrival, and yet no matter how early we set 
forth it was already hot when we drove out into the 
streets. 


For always it is in the streets that I seek to cap- 
ture the essential and distinctive quality of a city. 
Until the streets have spoken to me I am restless and 
without heart to present letters of introduction. The 
Church of San Pedro Claver and its padre had been 
an exception, for they were the link which made 
easy the transition from the past to the present. 

With pockets full of letters of introduction, we 
therefore wander unknown in the streets of new 


84 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


cities. Not until their elusive quality has been cap- 
tured is it possible for me to drink champagne from 
the silver goblets of lovely ladies and courtly 
gentlemen. Necessary as I admit these people are 
to round out the complete picture, they must wait 
while I stalk my big game; while I patiently, eagerly 
pursue the spirit of the drifting, unconscious, in- 
consequent masses whose drama is played in the 
streets. 

In Cartagena we drove, because in those tiny 
streets a stranger on foot is too conspicuous to stalk 
any sort of game successfully; for the wearers of 
hats and shoes seldom walk, and it is unusual to be 
quite so white as we who live under a northern sun. 
Then, too, it is disconcerting to be continually either 
hopping off the ledge of sidewalk, or flattening one- 
self against some wall in order that one may pass 
and be passed. Whereas, for my purpose, invisi- 
bility under the dark projecting hood of the carriage 
was ideal. 

It was also ideal that our driving consisted more 
of pauses than of progress, for it was during our 
frequent stops to photograph that I would curl up 
in a corner of the carriage where, unseen, I watched 
and absorbed the moving stream of life. 

In one of these pauses I discovered that to the 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 85 


Colombians the English-speaking foreigner is a 
‘‘meester,’’ as the European in Asia is known as 
‘‘sahib,’’ both words serving their users as nouns as 
well as titles. 

*“See the meester with the camera!’’ or, ‘‘ Meester, 
won’t you take my picture?’’ 

Thus from the street urchins of Cartagena the 
Optimist of our wanderings in Ecuador first re- 
ceived the name of ‘‘meester’’ which we were later 
to find applied to him throughout Colombia. 

It was while this ‘‘meester’’ went off to photo- 
graph that I would watch and meditate in my coach 
of invisibility, waiting and hoping for some clue to 
the Spirit of Cartagena. 

Waiting, I listened to girlish confidences called 
frankly from behind the blue window-bars of a rose- 
colored house, called across to the friend behind 
the green window of an azure house, the street so 
narrow that the girls scarcely seemed to raise their 
voices in the pretty Spanish melody which is their 
talk. 

In doorways, tinted to match the shutters and 
gratings of the glassless windows, tiny naked chil- 
dren whose skin was like polished walnut played in 
the dust. There were soft shouts and treble 
laughter. 


86 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Somewhere a woman crooned a song’; a song about 
a lovely little sky. ‘‘Ay!—ay!—ay!-ay!’’ It was 
such a lovely little sky! 

From time to time a milkman rattled by on his 
donkey, the man perched between two big, shiny 
milk-tins quite blinding in the sun. And there were 
men with wheelbarrows, each barrow numbered as 
we number automobiles. 

‘‘Why are the barrows numbered?’’ I put my 
question to the fat muscleless back of the coach- 
man. And the very crumpled white suit in the 
driver’s seat twisted round, ready as always for 
conversation. 

The barrows, he explained, were registered at the 
office of the police. The names, addresses, and pho- 
tographs of their owners all were on the official files. 
The coachmen, too, and their carriages were simi- 
larly registered. And, fishing in his pockets, he 
proudly produced the picture of himself which the 
law compelled him to carry. Cartagena, he boasted, 
was ‘‘very well arranged.’’ 

Returning to my silent invisibility, I listened to 
an old man who cried lottery-tickets. He cried 
indolently, as though it did not much matter whether 
the tickets were sold. Bananas were cheap, and one 
could lie down almost anywhere to sleep, while in 
the sunny heat clothes were so scanty as to be 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 87 


scarcely a problem. It was not really necessary to 
sell many tickets. 

The philosophic old man was followed by a tray 
heaped with plantains, borne on the head of a com- 
fortable barefoot negress in a white lawn dress. At 
lazy intervals she proclaimed, ‘‘I sell plantains, very 
delicious plantains!’’ 

The tray balanced itself perfectly, and thin gray 
rags of smoke floated away from her cigar. Some- 
times she stopped before a vivid door-step to ne- 
gotiate a sale; and sometimes she met a friend, and 
in their animated chat she would seem to forget all 
about the superior quality of that pile of green 
plantains, so nicely balanced on her head. Then all 
at once she and her trailing wisps of smoke would 
move on to the tune of ‘‘I sell plantains, very de- 
licious plantains !’’ 

The women who came and went in those colorful 
streets were all mulattos, negresses, or mestizos, all 
half-caste women of what civilization calls the lower 
classes; for the feminine aristocracy of Cartagena 
live in cloistered seclusion behind the balconies of 
the more pretentious houses. In Cartagena it is still 
a serious matter to be a lady. 

Those freer women whom I loved to watch as they 
moved through the varied pageant of the streets 
were, like the plantain-seller, generally barefoot and 


88 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


in clean, often stiffly starched, frocks of calico or 
lawn, white or flower-sprigged in pink and blue. All 
wore little medals on short necklaces or chains or 
beads; religious medals such as the priests of the 
conquest so long ago hung about the necks of the 
baptized, in order to distinguish them from the 
heathen. And all seemed possessed of an inex- 
haustible supply of amiable talk and an unlimited 
number of acquaintances. 

By half-past eight the heat of Cartagena is in- 
tense, and it is then that the waterman lifts up his 
refreshing cry. The waterman marches ahead of his 
cart, and his cart consists of a barrel lying prone 
between two supporting wheels, the whole drawn 
by a leisurely little donkey. And sometimes the 
barrels are a bright crude blue, sometimes yellow 
and often scarlet. In nondescript costume the owner 
leads the way, sounding his cool cry of ‘‘ Water! 
Water!’’ two gallons of it for five cents. 

And I would watch the passing of his cart. In 
the brilliant sunlight it cast sharp shadows; the 
shadows of wooden wheels revolving; wheels whose 
heavy wooden spokes were repeated in shadow. 
There was also a shadow donkey picking up and 
placing his little feet; four little feet picked up and 
placed, picked up and placed, all in clear-cut moving 
shadow. 





IN STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 





STREETS OF ROSE. AND BLUE 89 


Still other donkeys carried their masters mounted 
between great wicker panniers of green clustered 
fruit which was peddled from door to door. 

“<Those are mamones, mi sefora,’’ the coachman 
explained as he purchased for our refreshment. 

Together then, the coachman and I ate mamones, 
I copying his method; using the thumb-nail to free 
the fruit of its thick, hard, green skin, and then 
popping the jelly-like globe whole into the mouth, 
and later disposing of the large round stone, ejecting 
it in the highly plebeian manner demanded by 
mamones. The jelly substance which encircles the 
stone is delicately acid, and each fruit contains so 
little that it is possible to eat as many as one has 
time and patience to consume. 

And as we sat cozily eating mamones, we dis- 
cussed what I must surely see in Cartagena and what 
religious ceremonies I must not miss. 

There was the procession of Our Lady of Carmen. 
I must certainly see it, for ‘‘the Lady goes in much 
luxury; being an image very precious and possessed 
of many jewels.’’ JI must by all means see her 
procession. 

And as we talked, occasionally a motor or another 
coach would turn suddenly and sharply into our 
street, turning with warning clank of bell or honk 
of horn. And then the current of human and of 


90 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


donkey life stepped aside, to resume in a moment its 
placid way as though it had never known a carriage 
or a motor. 

From time to time ‘‘meester’’ would return for 
another film-pack, or perhaps to summon the coach- 
man’s help in the posing of some particularly diffi- 
cult subject. 

During one of these absences the coachman was in- 
formed by a policeman that it was a violation of the 
law to leave a vehicle with no one in it; and I could 
never decide whether that was Latin-American 
opinion of my sex, or whether it was proof of the 
invisibility which I sought in the shadow of the hood. 

When the sun had mounted high and hot there 
were no more street-criers and no more door-to-door 
peddlers of milk and water and fruit. The heat was 
dry and stifling and superlative. The only moving 
thing was a shadow passing along the deserted 
street, the shadow of a high-soaring vulture. 

It was eleven .o’clock, and whistles were blowing. 

‘‘Factory whistles,’? my coachman. volunteered, 
turning in his high seat. ‘‘When we drive outside 
the walls, senora, I will show you our factories. We 
have factories for the making of tile and cloth and 
shoes. Their whistles are blowing now for the 
siesta. The men will not work again until one 
o’clock.’’ 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE OT 


“Their pay,’’ he replied to my question, ‘‘their 
pay depends. It is from one to three dollars a day.’’ 

The whistles shrilled high, amazingly discordant 
in the still noon heat. 

‘*Yes, sefora, we have factories. And sometimes 

. Sometimes we have strikes!’’ 

He spoke with that air of pride with which certain 
hotels of my acquaintance vaunt their plumbing, 
speaking as though strikes and plumbing were 
offered as indisputable evidence of modern progress. 

‘“Oh, yes, seora; sometimes we have strikes.’’ 


Driving back through the torrid deserted streets 
and thinking over those watching hours of invisi- 
bility, considering the chance words of a coachman 
sent by Fate, I knew in the sudden way of revelation 
that the streets had spoken. My groping anxiety 
slipped away; and I felt strangely light and happy, 
as is the way after revelation. 

In the coming days I would subject this swift in- 
tuition to proof, testing it everywhere with fact. 
Meanwhile it might lie waiting in my heart, a secret 
between me and the flowing life of the streets. 


The world of those painted streets stops at the 
door of the hotel. It extends to the very threshold, 
but there it ends and something else begins. 

The entrance-hall, which is also the lobby, the 


92 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


lounge, and the reception-room, is flush with the 
sidewalk, so that the big wide-open doors seem to 
invite the street; but the street pauses only to offer 
a shoe-shine or a newspaper and then goes on its 
detached way as though it had no concern with the 
life of the hotel. 

On either side of this hall, which is very little 
wider than the generous doors, are ranged big 
rocking-chairs with cane backs and seats, chairs 
whose great black scrollwork arms extend them- 
selves to form the rockers. Across a ten-foot space 
these rows of rockers face each other. 

And there it is the custom of the hotel guests to 
sit, also facing each other, while they wait for the 
whir of electric fans to announce a meal. It is not 
well to go in before you hear the fans, for you will 
disturb the swarms of flies which, as it were, eat at 
the first table. 

So we would sit waiting for the fans, while one 
by one the chairs were occupied. And there was 
then so much temptation to speculate about the 
reality behind the human masks that the imagina- 
tion forgot to dwell upon the probable past of flies. 

The men who came to sit in the chairs were all 
perspiring in the hot breathless air, heavily perspir- 
ing. So was the Jamaican negro who managed the 
hotel to the best of his ability under the given cir- 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 93 


cumstances. So, too, were the servants, the newsboy 
standing in the door, and the ebony laundress 
mounting the wide stone staircase with her snowy 
work piled high in the basket on her head. Be- 
fore the late afternoon wind springs up, every one 
in Cartagena is thus perspiring. It seems a common 
human bond, like original sin; and, considering its 
inevitability in such a climate, it is not surprising 
that the early eighteenth-century traveler, Ulloa, 
remarks that he found ‘‘wigs not much worn in 
Cartagena.’’ 

I wilted at the mere thought of what we should 
all be in wigs, when even the white suits of the 
rocking-men were limp! 

Most of these men who waited for the fans were 
smooth-shaven, thin-lipped, and going early bald; 
they seemed tired and disillusioned, yet with a 
never-say-fail expression, as though they were forti- 
fied by a grim determined courage. 

They would sit staring out upon the street, but I 
was sure that they found no comfort in the fact that 
the University of Cartagena just across the way had 
vermilion walls and that its balconies and shuttered 
windows were of deep bright blue. They didn’t look 
as though they saw vermilion and blue with a Sacred 
Heart over the doorway, let alone extracting any 
comfort from it. No, they looked as though they 


94 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


were thinking about oil. And perspiring in breath- 
less heat must be pretty dismal if you are thinking 
of oil and compressing your lips to a grim line over 
the conviction that you must—absolutely must— 
make good in the matter of oil, before returning 
triumphant to some skeptical little home town which 
has possibly prophesied a bad end because some- 
thing in you had prevented your settling down to 
whatever happened to be expected. 

Occasionally it was a Britisher who came to sit in 
one of the cane rockers, bringing with him an im- 
pression of physical well-being; flourishing an as- 
tonishingly large handkerchief, fresh with the spicy 
scent of eau de Cologne, and taking a frank pride in 
the cut and the laundering of his white suit. 

The Englishman, while remaining always im- 
penetrably an Englishman, is rarely at serious war 
with his environment, however alien it may be. He 
has been driven to roam the world, and he speaks 
easily of the Congo, the Gold Coast, China, the 
Malay States— 

This experience wide and inescapable has taught 
him the care of the body under all manner of con- 
ditions. He knows the folly of scorning small 
accustomed comforts and takes them with him. And 
he has learned the enormous influence of one’s 
appearance upon one’s morale, 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 95 


When, as we sat waiting, one of these globe- 
wanderers shook out his coolly fragrant handker- 
chief I felt that he might be thinking to himself: 
‘‘Jolly old building, that! All vermilion and blue 
with the Sacred Heart over the door.’’ 

As the days passed and the chairs came to know 

each other better, they often fell into talk; brief 
scraps of talk before, and sometimes for the space 
of a smoke, after meals. 
- One of these rocking-men happened to be a Scotch- 
man, fond of talking of Sumatra. ‘‘In Sumatra,’’ he 
would say, ‘‘in Sumatra, where I was prospecting 
for gold, I lived four years on the top of a hill with 
jungle all around me; miles and miles of it. My men 
made a clearing where they built my house, and I 
had them cut away enough bush to make room for a 
garden. Oh, I had wonderful vegetables; my own 
fowls, too . . . always fresh eggs. 

‘‘When the Dutch officials came by on inspection 
I was able to serve them a first-rate dinner. I even 
had champagne on top of my hill in the jungle. 

‘‘T lived there four years, alone but for my 
natives, never seeing another soul except those stray 
officials. Yet I was sad to leave my place in Su- 
matra. At night there was always a breeze, and I ’d 
pull up my blanket—the same blanket I ’ve with me 
now, fine Scotch wool and a beauty. 


96 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘Yes, I was sad to leave my place. It was ever 
so long before I could go to sleep without missing 
the jungle voices .. . tigers talking to each other 
in the jungle, you know..’’ 

And now this man was outfitting to prospect up 
the Sucio River; staying on in Cartagena long 
enough to make the careful preparations of the 
seasoned explorer; providing for every emergency, 
taking along every possible comfort to mitigate the 
climate. 

Such a man is almost certain not to return with 
lines of bitter disillusionment etched around thin 
lips. 

But if this Scotchman impersonated man directing 
destiny, we had in a certain engineer, who rocked 
with us, the incarnation of the survival of the 
fittest: a man who had knocked about Mexico and 
Central and South America; leading a rough 
uncared-for life, until with the years, he had passed 
through a private evolution of his own; becoming 
completely adjusted ; having survived so many tropi- 
cal diseases, from which comrades perished, that 
he had come at last to resemble an old garment, so 
long worn that every line has shaped itself to 
habitual custom. 

I could n’t feel that this engineer bothered about 
vermilion walls, but then he didn’t need to; he had 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 97 


his engines and his pipe and the tales of his ex- 
periences. Having started without illusions, he had 
lost none and needed none. 

His job in Cartagena, he said, was to ‘‘put into 
oil’? the locomotives of the little railway which con- 
nects Cartagena with the Magdalena at Calamar. 
Were we going into the interior? Then we would 
see on the La Dorada line a couple of engines he’d 
put into oil. He didn’t know where he was going 
next, but there were plenty of locomotives in South 
America to be transformed into oil-burners. 

We had originally dropped into talk with this 
engineer because he had overheard us speaking of 
Keuador, and he had called from his table to ours, 
calling above the buzz of fans and the clatter of 
dishes, to ask when we had been in Ecuador, and 
whether we had known So-and-so, who was an em- 
ployee of the Guayaquil-to-Quito Railway. 

Outside, in the rockers, he had from time to time 
pursued his reminiscences, giving a flat nasal pro- 
nunciation to all the pretty Spanish and Indian 
names of places, places which had once seen mighty 
deeds in the shadow of giant snow mountains, but 
which were known to him only as they fell into the 
schedule of railroad life. 

Did we know, for example, that one employee had 
recently killed another? Both were friends of his. 


98 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


He’d just had the news, but he had himself long 
ago heard the threat made: 

First employee to second: ‘‘TI tell you I don’t like 
your face, and what ’s more I intend to change it.’’ 

Second employee: ‘‘But it ’s all the face I ’ve got, 
an’ I ’m used to it.’’ 

Second employee to engineer as they walked away 
in the night, for one of them was ‘‘due to take the 
milk-train out of Ambato’’: 

‘‘Some day I ’ve got to kill that man.’’ 

Well, here was news that at last his friend had 
done it and then, of course, had to skip the country; 
and to think that he’ d heard him say, walking over 
to the engine in the yards at Ambato, that some day 
he’d have to kill Joe... . 

‘‘Gosh,’’ he resumed, after giving his pipe the 
minute care exacted by pipes, ‘‘Gosh, but it ’s fine 
to meet folks who ’ve traveled the line from Huigra 
over the mountains !’’ 


And often there would come to where we sat in 
the rockers the exotic child whose natural habitat 
was among the daisy-fields of a temperate land; a 
child transplanted to that tropical hotel, where she 
had become pathetically pale and pathetically thin; 
a meager child with great, dark, heavy-lashed eyes 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 99 


in a delicate face wan as a moon-flower in the dusk. 
She would slip her thin little arm in mine and whis- 
per to me that she knew what was to be for dessert 

. lee-cream ... she ’d asked for it. And did I 
know that her father, who was up the Atrato River 
prospecting for oil, might bring her a monkey? She 
loved monkeys, simply loved them. 

She was by turns imperious and by turns intimate 
with the hotel servants, showing an amazing mastery 
of colloquial Spanish. 

‘‘But I can’t read,’’ she told me; ‘‘is n’t it a pity? 
And I’m eight years old! . . . Do you like to bar- 
gain in the shops? I do, and I never pay what they 
ask ...never....I say: ‘No! I won’t pay you 
three dollars. I will only pay you one.’ And I 
always get it for one. I will go with you when you 
shop ... if you like. 

‘‘Do you see these men? They are all my friends. 
They give me sweets and take me for automobile 
rides. They are sorry for me, because... ”’ 

Her soft white frock nestling against me, she 
would pour forth a stream of talk; rapid and a trifle 
hysterical; her frail little body quivering with 
nervous resentment. I soon realized that this ap- 
palling moon-flower child had learned to capitalize 
her woes, playing her sordid little cards for all they 


100 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


were worth. But then she should n’t have had such 
cards to play; she should have been frisking about 
like a young lamb among daisies and buttercups. 


The cane rockers of the lobby were thus orchestra 
seats, and the play ... the play might be called, 
‘‘The Nordic in the Tropics,’’ a drama of adventure, 
of tragedy, and often of high achievement. 

Thus did the life of the streets stop at the 
threshold; and there was within no echo of what was 
without, no echo of what the streets whispered. 


The House of the Inquisition in Cartagena still 
stands on the west side of the little square where 
three centuries ago was held the first Auto de Fe. 
But the square is no longer the Plaza de la Inquisi- 
cion. It is now the Parque de Bolivar—Bolivar 
whose revolution not only won independence for 
Colombia, but at the same time put an end to the 
Inquisition and initiated the movement to abolish 
slavery. 

About his equestrian statue, so young and so 
triumphant that his melancholy death at Santa 
Marta seems incredible, there stands a circle of regal 
palms whose tall symmetric trunks rise like pale 
columns to support the green grace of their plumed 
heads. This park of Bolivar is a tiny place, a place 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 101 


of indolent peace, where I loved to sit; sitting so 
quiet that the emerald lizards continued running 
races around the dry basins of vermilion fountains, 
which did not play because water was a precious 
thing, to be peddled in carts. 

I would sit in that lazy peace with gold butterflies 
drifting about lke petals from the sun, and high in 
the palms the clear, confident call of ‘‘kiskadees.’’ 


And it was not until the peace of the present had 
veiled past horrors that I passed through the impos- 
ing doorway, under the Spanish arms, and into the 
House of the Inquisition itself. 

The private family which now occupies the house 
made us welcome, and ‘‘meester’’ had permission 
- to photograph where he pleased. And he pleased, by 
means of a ladder, to climb to the roof that he 
might secure a series of views over the city; leaving 
me with one of the sweet-eyed daughters of the 
house. 

We had mounted by spacious stone stairs from the 
first floor to the second and finally to the third; 
passing along wide galleries surrounding the central 
patio. We had looked into the huge airy rooms 
which open from these galleries; rooms where mod- 
ern furniture fraternized with ponderous old heri- 
tages from colonial days; rooms whose floors were 


* 


102 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


tiled in cool black and white squares. The thing 
that one remembers, however, is not the furnishing 
of these rooms but their size, their proportion, and 
the luminous atmosphere which floods them with 
clear white light. 

‘Where are the dungeons?’’ I asked. 

‘‘The dungeons, senora, as well as the room of 
torture were subterranean. All have been closed, 
long ago closed; and during the Revolution the in- 
struments were destroyed. There remains only the 
bed of torment, which now serves as the grating of 
a window in the cathedral.’’ 

But these past things did not interest the modern 
daughter of the House of the Inquisition. She 
wanted to know what Colombians we had met in 
New York; for she was certain to know various 
members of their large family connection. 

Such conversation with a Latin-American is a 
thorough drill in all words which define family rela- 
tionships: and if you would be fluent you must have 
ready for immediate use the Spanish equivalents for 
grandmother and grandfather; father and mother; 
uncle and aunt; brother and sister; grandson and 
granddaughter; niece and nephew; the masculine 
and feminine of cousin; so on through all the in-laws, 
each with its proper gender. 

Standing at an upper window of the House of the 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 103 


Inquisition my companion pointed out to me the roof 
of the house of the son-in-law of that Sefora X 
whom I had known in the United States, at the same 
time confiding that her own family was large. I 
was to imagine that her mother had seventeen chil- 
dren.... Did I think that was many?... But 
seven of them had died; so after all there were only 
ten, and ten was not many. ...4I1 should know 
the women of the Departamento de Antioquia: they 
had really many; a woman in Antioquia had been 
known to have twenty-nine children. 

‘‘We are all married,’’ she continued, ‘‘all ten of 
us. Some of us live here with our parents; others 
have villas in the suburbs, in Manga and in Cabrero. 
Have you seen Manga and Cabrero, and do you not 
think them lovely ?’’ 

These were subjects more interesting than dun- 
geons; they were the things that filled her life, 
personal and important things. 

And then she concluded with a small sigh, ‘‘ But 
we marry ourselves too young.’’ She sighed and 
went away, perhaps a little bewildered at having 
expressed so revolutionary a thought. 

After she left me I remained looking out over the 
view which from the roof ‘‘meester’’ was photo- 
graphing. I looked over red-tiled roofs, red with 
the dull soft red of Pompeii; irregular roofs of vary- 


104 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


ing shapes and heights, across to the old square 
tower of the Church of Santo Domingo, buff-colored 
and moss-grown, with old bells hanging in the tower. 
I looked upon balconies whose little protecting roofs 
had sky-blue linings and whose jalousies were 
painted any happy color that their owners had 
é fancied. I looked down upon patios, upon the heads 
of palms lifted as though to investigate their neigh- 
bors’ domains. 

I watched the downward flight of vultures coming 
to perch on the red roofs, alighting with their bodies 
horizontally balanced for a moment before they 
straightened to an erect position, alighting with a 
rustle of wings like the rustle of stiff old-fashioned 
black silk skirts. Here and there on the roofs vul- 
tures thus perched; perching with an air of irre- 
proachable dignity, as though they scorned all who 
labored for a living, who did not like themselves wait 
for Providence to provide; while in the patios crow- 
ing roosters celebrated female achievement, and | 
under the shadow of the foliage doves drowsily 
cooed and insistent ‘‘kiskadees’’ fluted their gaily 
reiterated question : 

““Qu’-est-ce-qu’-il-dit? Qu’-est-ce-qu’-il-dit?’’ 

‘‘What does the House say?’’ I questioned, fol- 
lowing their example. 





EDAS 


THE: BOV 





STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 105 


What does it say? . . . Why, the House of the 
Inquisition which fronts on the Parque de Bolivar, 
the House and the Parque and the soft-eyed 
daughter of the house who had made the sudden 
discovery that they ‘‘married themselves too 
young,’’—all spoke with the voice of the streets. 


‘The Inquisition,’’ said the coachman, as we pro- 
ceeded one afternoon to visit what the Cartagenians 
eall the bévedas, ‘‘The Inquisition was established 
in Cartagena in the year 1610 and was finally 
abolished in the year 1821.”’ 

The ease with which the Latin-American can at 
will produce the dates of his history is amazing. 
Almost any wayside acquaintance can supply the 
year, the month, and the day of the ‘‘first ery of 
independence in America of the South.’’ And many 
will be able to add the names and dates of battles 
and the dates upon which individual cities achieved 
their independence. None of these dates will be 
abbreviated by so much as the slurring of a syllable; 
your informant rattling off the long phrases as easily 
as he breathes. To your ‘‘When?’’ he will, for 
example, immediately respond, ‘‘En el ano mil 
ochocientos viente y uno.”’ 

For the average Latin-American is more conscious 


106 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


of his history than are we of the United States, 
possibly because it is an important factor in his 
ancestry. He is of a new and composite race, in 
which the blood of conqueror and conquered must 
inevitably struggle for supremacy during the proc- 
ess of crystallization into a new form. 

So our coachman of mixed races, pointing with his 
whip to the city walls, would comment that they 
were many years in building, ‘‘But by the slaves, 
Sehora ... under the lash of the Spaniards.’’ And 
in his bitterness there was strangely an echo of 
pride; for although it was his blood which in that 
long ago had built Cartagena’s walls, it was also his 
blood which had wielded the lash. Thus his Spanish 
blood seemed to ery, ‘‘ Behold my wonderful walls!’’ 
while the darker blood moaned, ‘‘Many years in 
building . . . by slaves . . . under the lash... .”’ 

Frequently this coachman would pause to recall 
some memory of Spaniard or of revolutionist: in 
these streets after the great siege lay the corpses 
of those who had perished of hunger or disease; in 
this house or that had lived one of the martyrs who 
more than a hundred years ago gave his life for the 
independence of Colombia. 

I had read the dreary lists of those martyrs; name 
after name followed by the fatal words ‘‘shot in 
Cartagena.’’ 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 107 


Manuel de Anguiano, colonel . . . shot in Cartagena. 

José Marfa Porticarrero, merchant . . . shot in Cartagena. 
Antonio José de Ayos, doctor and lawyer . . . shot in Cartagena. 
Manuel de Catillo Rada, general . . . shot in Cartagena. 

So on and on, with an occasional ‘‘hanged’’ sub- 
stituted for ‘‘shot.’’ 

The memory of these melancholy lists so endures 
in Cartagena that the words ‘‘Los espanoles’’ and 
‘‘Los martires’’ are common even upon the lips of 
coachmen. 

It was, of course, the Spaniards who had built the 
bovedas to which we drove, and the bdvedas consist 
of a long arcade of high-vaulted compartments built 
in the wall near the old reservoir and the bastion. 
In the days of the espavioles these great vaults were 
used as prisons, while in various later wars they 
served as barracks. Now, under the protection of 
the Society of San Vicente, they are homes where 
needy families may live without payment of rent. 

From the opposite side of the wall, where it faces 
the sea, the presence of these bévedas is indicated 
by tall narrow loopholes cut in the thickness of the 
massive wall. The coachman, who had left his car- 
riage in charge of an urchin and come with us to 
explore, explained that the loopholes once let in light 
and air to prisoners upon whom the great outer 
doors of the vaults had closed. 

‘¢Here,’’ he said, ‘‘where we now stand, is filled-in 


108 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


jand. In the days of the Spaniards the sea came up 
and beat against the walls. Sometimes when the sea 
was high it entered through the loopholes until the — 
prisoners inside stood deep in water. Many died, 
they say, died there in the bévedas.’’ 

From the top of the wall we passed to the bastion 
through a little tunnel, in the floor of which the feet 
of men had worn deep ruts. Through this tunnel 
we came out over what was once a drawbridge; 
past a white sentry-box, and on to the parapet, in 
which were openings for guns; across another draw- 
bridge to more gun-embrasures, and finally to a 
sentry-tower at the edge of the sea. 

To the right along the beach stretched the suburb 
of Cabrero; a line of white houses among palms and 
scarlet flamboyant trees. Close under the shadow 
of the wall clustered thatched huts with cocoanut- 
palms whispering above their peaked roofs, while 
brown children bathed in a sea of jade. 

Further investigation of the wall led us to the dis- 
covery that an entire family had taken up residence 
in a short tunnel, very like the entrance to an under- 
ground railway. The family was complete even to 
a cat and a baby. 

This is the most interesting section of Cartagena’s 
wall; for not only are the bdvedas and the tunnels 
found here, but here also is the old reservoir which 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 109 


was one of the greatest of the achievements of the 
Spaniards, whose constant aim was to render more 
and more invincible the city where quantities of gold 
and silver were assembled for shipment to Spain. 
Cartagena must be able to resist attack by land or 
by sea, and it must be able to withstand siege. 

We walked about on the masonry roof of this 
reservoir, examining the many little gutters, or 
trenches, which collect and convey the rain through 
traps into the tank, which still, three hundred years 
later, supplies the adjoining part of the town. 

Close by are those bévedas where the Spaniards 
had kept their prisoners—water and prisoners thus 
guarded by this the strongest part of the wall. 

To reach the bovedas from the wall we descended 
the long ramp up which cannon were rolled into po- 
sition in the days when Cartagena was bombarded 
by pirates, descending to a long arcade of rose- 
colored stucco. 

In each of the great compartments which front on 
the arcade we found a family living. The heavy 
doors were now wide open, letting in the light and 
air denied those long-ago prisoners. Often the com- 
partments were divided into two or more rooms by 
means of a rope over which were hung lengths of 
cloth, with a curtain draped back in the center to 
provide a passageway. And under the arcade 


110 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


swarmed a population of goats and pigeons, dogs, 
eats, and chickens, with which assemblage the human 
inhabitants democratically mingled. 

When the sun was low we would put down the top 
of the carriage, and then the children of the bovedas 
flocked like twittering birds about me. 

‘‘Why do you write, sehora?”’ 

‘‘Behold, the sefiora has a book full of writing!”’ 

‘‘T can write, too.”’ 

‘‘We go to school, and there they teach us to 
write.”’ 

‘¢But why do you write in the coach, senora?”’ 

‘See, her pencil is the color of gold!”’ 

“Ts it truly gold?’’ 

And they would confide to me what was important 
in their lives, volunteering apropos of nothing: 

‘‘My father died ten months ago. These are my 
three sisters . . . Maria, Concepcion, and Inez. We 
live here in the Dovedas, and it costs us not a cent. 
Our mother gains money by washing and ironing.’’ 

Or another would announce, ‘‘Every day we swim 
in the sea, sefiora.’’ 

And there was a little girl, immaculately neat in 
abbreviated blue and white calico, with white canvas 
pumps strapped over brown ankles and with a neck- 
lace of little silver beads from which hung the usual 
religious medal. She wanted to tell me all about 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 111 


how her father had once been wounded by a bull. It 
was at the feast of Our Lady of Candelaria ... on 
February 2. No, her father was not a bull-fighter; 
he was merely ‘‘conducting the bull.’’ 

When we drove away, this child murmured grace- 
fully that she was ‘‘very happy to have met’? us. 


It was Sunday morning, and the Church of Santo 
Domingo gradually filled until all its rows of wooden 
benches were occupied. We had arrived early when 
it was still quite empty and when the belated night 
breeze blew a faint challenge to the day. 

The Church of Santo Domingo is wide and high, 
with huge doors through which light pours into the 
white and gold of the spacious interior. We sat in 
that luminous whiteness where stirred the tardy 
little night breeze, wafting as it stirred the accumu- 
lated perfume of incense. And up in the moss-grown 
tower the old bells summoned as the church slowly 
filled. 

The assembling congregation which entered with 
the light were not in the somber black of the churches 
of the high plateau but in a garb as tropical as the 
warm, wide-flung light. The women came in dresses 
of white or lavender, rose or blue, with mantillas 
draped over high Spanish combs, lace mantillas of 
white or black. Only an occasional dowager was all 


112 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


in black. And as these figures took their places and 
dropped forward to their knees they became all 
lovely and provocative; for the lacy cascade of a 
mantilla falling over the shoulders promises always 
beauty. 

Up in the square buff tower the ancient bells 
jangled while the church thus filled. 

Schools and orphanages came, marshaled like regi- 
ments by the priests or nuns in charge. There was a 
troop of little girls in Virgin blue, which is the soft 
sky-blue of a summer day; and over the heads of 
these children were thrown filmy white scarfs, as 
cumulous clouds float in the summer sky when it is 
Virgin blue. This company of girls was directed by 
Sisters of Charity in voluminous tan dresses with 
flapping winged head-gear, like aéroplanes. There 
were other groups of girls in tan with white veils 
tied about their heads, knotted at the back and 
hanging to their waists; there were groups all in 
white with white lace mantillas; while companies of 
little school-boys, awkward in their Sunday best, 
came in charge of padres. 

Outside a military band played, and to its martial 
music three white-uniformed officers entered and 
passed slowly down the great length of the church 
to seats reserved for them before the chancel. They 
had clanking spurs on their white shoes and shiny 








* 


4 
THE VIRGIN GOES ON PROCESSION 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 113 


swords at their sides, while in their hands they 
carried white caps with wide crimson bands. 

Great seven-branched candlesticks were lit before 
the altar. It was the day of that celebration of the 
Virgin which we had been urged not to miss; and 
her shrine was festooned with garlands of pink 
roses and bright with many fluttering candles. 

The band had gone away, and up in the mossy 
tower again the bells clanged; from the rear of the 
church a great ecclesiastical personage entered at 
the head of the procession of choir-boys. This was 
the archbishop, very gorgeous in his magenta robe 
with hood and skulleap of cerise. Some day I may 
forget the magenta and cerise, but always I must 
remember his hand, his large soft white hand which 
continually blessed, as he moved down the aisle, 
blessing those on the right and those on the left. 

At the altar robe upon robe was added to this 
bishop until when he finally came forward to sing the 
mass he was a mountain of magnificence, topped by 
a tall gold miter. 

By this time the church was crowded, with many 
standing in the aisles. The night breeze had gone; 
the candles burned steadily without flicker, and in 
the heat of the church women fanned incessantly 
with little light fans. 

Mass in that great tropical church was very im- 


114 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


posing; very Catholic in its pomp; very exotic in its 
setting, with the countless vibrant fans like gauzy 
pulsating little wings. 

But it was not until a dark young priest in a 
black gown began to speak from the pulpit that I 
heard again the voice of the streets. 

The priest spoke clearly and slowly, addressing 
himself often to the Virgin, whose rose-decked image 
he faced; reviewing her earthly sorrows, from that 
night when there was no room in the inn, to the final 
hour of her anguish before the cross, when she knew 
the supreme agony of being powerless to help one 
whom she loved. 

Always the priest reiterated that she who had 
known sorrow, all sorrow, was ‘‘our Mother.’’ 

Upon a later occasion I attended a similar service 
where the officiating priest, whose Spanish was of 
Castile, dwelt entirely upon the fact that the holy 
‘“Maria’’ was now a princess—a princesa. And he 
gave to the pronunciation of the c its Castilian sound 
of th. His ‘‘Maria’’ was thus a ‘‘printhesa’’; a 
royal princess living in a glory beyond description. 
And he, too, reiterated that she was ‘‘our Mother’’; 
that the lowliest had this close connection with a 
splendor beyond any ever known to the royalty of 
earth. 

- But I had been aware of no emotional response to 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 115 


what he had said. Small boys had been sending off 
fire-crackers in the very doorway of the cathedral, 
in honor, of course, of the Virgin. But I could not 
somehow imagine fire-crackers going off while the 
priest of Santo Domingo spoke that morning so 
simply of the ‘‘ Mother’’ who, having known all sor- 
row, understood all sorrow. 

It was as though that young dark priest spoke 
from the heart of a Cartagenian to the hearts of all 
Cartagenians; speaking not with the accent of 
Europe, but with the very intonation of that Latin- 
American city in the year 1923; speaking to the heart 
that has evolved from a past of fear, of cruelty, and 
of much pain. 

And while he spoke the church was very still; the 
little girls in Virgin blue and in tan and in white— 
all were still. Even the boys were still, and the 
young men who stood in the aisles. 


In the afternoon, when the cool trade-wind blew 
from the northeast, the procession formed to carry 
Santo Domingo’s Virgin on her yearly tour of the 
streets. 

A silk banner led the way, its ribbons held by three 
young girls, the richness of whose costumes showed 
them to be of the sheltered class so rarely seen in the 
public streets of Latin-America. But in honor of 


116 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


the image of the Virgin, silk and satin, of scarlet or 
green or white, with dainty matching slippers and 
spangled coronets, would walk the dusty streets. 

Diminutive flower-girls, embryonic senoritas, were 
dressed as blue or white angels with long feathered 
wings reaching to their baby heels. Behind them was 
the image, surrounded by pink roses and clusters of 
burning candles, and standing on a platform borne 
on the shoulders of four men. Behind the image an 
acolyte swung his censer. And there followed 
priests and choir, a military band, a company of 
soldiers, and finally the congregation falling into the 
line, silk and lace side by side with faded calico and 
bare feet. 

It was thus that the procession passed out into 
the streets, where spectators filled balconies and 
windows, crowded in doorways and on the ledges of 
sidewalks. 

We passed down the Street of Santo Domingo, 
into the Street of the Inquisition, around Bolivar’s 
palmy little Park, into the Street of the Star, the 
Street of the Mantilla, and back to the church. 

Along the way the infant angels strewed flowers 
from their silver baskets, the band played gay brave 
music, and from time to time men stepped forward to 
relieve the bearers of the image; all Cartagena 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE a7 


doing gala homage to the Virgin who understands 
Sorrow. 

And through these same streets once wound in 
mournful procession the victims of the first Auto 
de Fe, passing at dawn and carrying green candles 
which flickered in their trembling hands... . 


Thus the streets of Cartagena speak continually 
of their past as well as of their present: the past 
speaking in accents of merciless daring and of dark 
pain; the present—the present, as gently as the 
doves which softly coo in the patios, speaking of a 
happy gentleness and tolerance, as though the soul 
of the people had in this fashion reacted to what 
had gone before. 

In the days which followed we revisited the 
bévedas, the walls, and the churches; we sat in the 
plazas and investigated the shops. We walked, or 
drove, up and down the streets until we had covered 
either on foot or in the carriage every inch of 
Cartagena. 

Hiverywhere there was the same gentle spirit; 
never a voice raised against another; never the 
sound of a Colombian parent punishing a child. We 
were even run into one night as we drove across the 
bridge which leads to the suburb of Manga; a 


118 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


demoralized motor driving straight into us, head on. 
But our placid horse took no more notice of the inci- 
dent than if he had been really the Canton flannel 
animal he so strongly resembled. The driver was 
grieved but not angry. After a confidential con- 
versation with the horse, he remounted and drove 
on. The police later stopped us to inquire details. 
But no one was greatly disturbed. 

So does Cartagena remain happily calm after the 
turbulence of its past. 


All this led me to visit the prison, there to subject 
to a final test the revelation of the streets. 

Tn one of the best books on Colombia, written some 
fifteen years ago, I had come across this paragraph: 


The Colombian prisons are a disgrace, dirty, insanitary, full 
of vermin, without cots (no great hardship, however, as their 
inmates are accustomed to sleeping on the floor or on the ground) 
and rations so seanty and poor that prisoners usually have food 
brought in daily by their families or friends. 


The prison, therefore, would be a test. 

From its exterior Cartagena’s prison has small 
resemblance to what we think of as a jail, for it is 
housed in the old convent of San Diego; and, aside 
from the armed soldier in a sentry-box outside the 
door, there is nothing to indicate that the pacing 
figures of the religious no longer tell their beads in 
its cloisters. 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 119 


Within, a man whom we took to be the warden, 
since he seemed in authority, put himself at our 
service, and together we inspected the prison; the 
chapel, the kitchens, the dining-room, and the bed- 
rooms. 

I didn’t fancy the odor of the dark chapel, but 
the bedrooms were reasonably light, and provided 
with cots; while the kitchen was quite a pattern of 
neatness. 

The prisoners we found variously employed in 
making napkin-rings of horn, decorating bowls made 
of gourds, weaving the hemp sandals so commonly 
used in Colombia; while in a carpenter’s shop they 
were designing and constructing furniture. 

All were in the casual dress of a small tropical 
town, nondescript trousers and nondescript collar- 
less shirts. None had the look of being watched; 
when we entered a room there was no sense of 
change in its desultory atmosphere, the men going 
quietly on with their work, apparently unaware of 
the presence of warden and guests. 

Out in the patio under the scanty shade of a 
papaya-tree, after properly admiring a trim vege- 
table garden where lettuce and beets and radishes 
were laid out in tidy rows, I commented to the 
warden upon the absence of uniforms. 

‘‘Oh, but we have uniforms,’’ he said. ‘‘They 


120 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


just happen to be worn out, and we are waiting for 
new ones from Bogota.”’ 

‘‘But I hoped you did n’t believe in uniforms!”’ 

‘¢ Ah, sefiora, how else would you know the differ- 
ence between the criminals and the rest of us?’’ 

How, indeed? For the prisoners we had observed 
at work in the shops had simple mild faces. So had 
the warden, and so perhaps had we. Thus the 
answer to the question would have led into a discus- 
sion of what after all makes a criminal. 

I have often wondered since whether those uni- 
forms ever came from Bogota, or whether they had 
been invented on the spur of the moment, in the fear 
that a sefiora from a foreign land might think dis- 
paragingly of a country which did not degrade its 
prisoners by the very garments they wore! Nowhere 
in Colombia did I see any official prison garb, and 
it seemed singular that all uniforms should have 
been worn out at the same time. 

I asked about capital punishment, and was told 
that the death penalty had been abolished and that 
the heaviest sentence the law can inflict is twenty 
years’ imprisonment, which term, except in the case 
of murder, may be shortened for good behavior. 

Bringing us to a pause in the door of the carpen- 
ters’ shop, the warden said: ‘‘One of our prisoners 
speaks English. I think he would like to talk to 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 121 


you. He has served nine years of his murder sen- 
tence. He is one of the best men we have, a good 
man and a good worker.’’ 

As he spoke he beckoned to a tall middle-aged 
mulatto who at once came over to us. 

‘* And how is it that you speak English?’’ I asked. 

‘“‘T am coming, senora, from the island of Provi- 
dence, near to San Andrés.’’ His inflection was the 
singsong of the British West Indies. ‘‘In our island 
we are speakin’ English because in times past we 
were all British subjects, but now belongin’ to 
Colombia.’’ 

‘And you are here with no one who speaks your 
language?’’ 

‘*‘T hov’ learn the Sponish, sefora.”’ 

The warden, although he did not understand 
English, had moved away as though he would leave 
the man free from any restraint. 

‘¢And are you at all content here?’’ 

‘“The days pass. I hov’ serve now nine years. 
We work eight hours; and half our pay they put by 
for us until we are coming out... . The food is 
plenty but not well prepared. No, the place is not 
too bad . . . not bad. 

‘‘When I enter I am bitter in my heart, sefora. 
But I hov’ think much, and I hov’ come to know in 
myself—in myself—that it is right an’ just. I know 


122 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


that in myself... . But my twenty years! I hov’ 
lost my twenty years! ...”? 


We visited this prison again, ‘‘meester’’ inventing 
a small repair job for our English-speaking friend. 
Our second visit happened in the absence of the 
warden, but nothing was different: the prison was 
the same quiet place where men worked placidly at 
their tasks, undistinguished in dress from their 
keepers; a place where, because there was little re- 
sentment, there was time for repentance. 

The coachman had volunteered the information 
that the man who was mending ‘‘meester’s’’ plate- 
holders was ‘‘Meester Thompson,’’ who had killed 
a man in the island of Providence. 

He mentioned the circumstance sympathetically, 
as though it were a regrettable misfortune rather 
than a crime; as in Butler’s ‘‘Hrewhon,’’ where 
crime is a disease and disease a crime. The Hre- 
whonians might ask, ‘‘How is your poor father’s 
embezzlement?’’ But never would they allude to 
anything so disgraceful as a father’s pneumonia! 

‘*Yes,’’ said the coachman, ‘‘Meester Thompson 
killed a man in Providence. But he has now very 
good conduct.’’ 

On our last visit to the prison I remained outside, 
while the ‘‘meester of the camera’’ went in to settle 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 123 


his indebtedness with that other who, because he too 
spoke English, was also a ‘‘meester.’’ 

I was sitting, as I loved to do, with my note-book 
and pencil, letting the color and life of the streets 
ereep into my pages, hardly realizing that I wrote, 
as well as gazed and listened and dreamed, and later 
almost surprised to find suggested in words, light 
and shadow and speech. 

When I sat thus writing the simpdtico coachman 
also sat very quiet and refrained from his engaging 
banter with passersby. 

I was, therefore, startled when he burst into sud- 
den laughter. 

‘*Look, sefiora!’’ 

I had been for some time half aware that a distant 
phonograph played modern jazz; and, turning, I saw 
that to this rhythm a tiny naked child danced, his 
baby body responding to every syncopation. He 
danced in the sunlight before the doorway of a small 
fruit shop; and he danced with every atom of him- 
self; not only with his arms and hands, his legs and 
feet, but with every muscle and nerve. Indeed, it 
was not so much that he danced in the sun as that 
he was the music, the music incarnated in a small 
body, warmly gold in the sun. 

‘‘He has danced like that,’’ his mother said, ‘‘since 
he could walk. He cannot yet talk, though he under- 


124 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


stands everything. But always when the phono- 
graph plays he dances. He will dance again now if 
they put on another piece. 


‘‘His father,’’ she exclaimed, ‘‘was French’’.. . 
but he had gone away, and she never heard from him 
any more. 


While we talked the windows of the prison filled 
with the convicts, who, attracted by the merry 
laughter of our coachman and by the music, had laid 
down their work and come to share the excitement. 

And again the phonograph played and the child 
danced; up on his little toes, with his arms extended 
and his body quivering with every inflection of the 


rhythm. 
The convicts crowding the windows laughed and 
forgot. . . . It did not matter that they looked 


through gratings; for so did most of the citizens of 
Cartagena, gratings being more associated with ele- 
gance than with jails. It mattered only that no 
commanding voice ordered them back to work, while 
they watched a child dance and forgot... . 


Driving through streets, little by little grown as 
eloquent of the present as in the beginning they had 
been of the past, I listened to the conversing coach- 
man; his conversation wafted back as we trotted and 
turned, out of one little street and into another. 


STREETS OF ROSE AND BLUE 125 


‘‘When they leave the prison,’’ he remarked, 
‘“‘they all have a trade, and all have money. The 
prison has saved their money for them.”’ 

The coachman invariably spoke of money as sil- 
ver . . . as plata; and the word ‘‘plata’’ is unctu- » 
ously alluring. 

‘*Yes, they have all silver, and a trade.’’ 

He did not seem to take into account any social 
stigma which might follow one like a sinister shadow 
from place to place, appearing even in one’s death- 
notice if one were sufficiently important to have a 
death-notice. 

‘¢. . . all silver anda trade.’’ There was friendly 
congratulation in the words and in the tone. 

Thus my revelation survived the test of the 
prison... . 


When we drew up before the hotel the rocking-men 
had begun to assemble in the lobby. Again the life 
of the streets stopped on the threshold, pausing 
there, as that sunlit gentleness of the present which 
is born of the bitter past hesitates and trembles on 
the brink of that new thing which is the future. 

For this is what was revealed in those streets of 
rose and blue; against the historic background of 
oppression there was everywhere a sense of for- 
bearance; shown in the freeing of slaves at a time 


126 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


when in the United States black men were still 
chattels; in the abolition fourteen years ago of 
the death penalty while we yet presume legally 
to take man’s life; and shown in the soft voice in 
which, if you will listen, the streets themselves will 
speak to you. But even as they speak, men in hotel 
lobbies talk of development of capital and of return 
on investments; and there are strikes, and factory 
whistles, piercingly shrill. In the revelation of those 
streets there is always this pervading sense of 
change, imminent change, on the threshold of which 
trembles the reluctant present. 


CHAPTER VII 
NIGHT 


N the soft Cartagena night it is pleasant to wan- 
I der through shadowy streets from which the 
warm pervasive;dark has blotted out even the vivid 
rose and blue. 

There had been some trouble with the public elec- 
tric plant, and Cartagena was so dark that when 
strolling about its streets I again found the present 
hard to hold on to; it kept slipping away, as elusive 
as a dream, leaving the past to come once more into 
focus in its place; the past which peopled the streets 
with history and legend. 

Through the open door of a tiny shop light would 
stream out into the street, and beyond the margin 
of its bright pool the darkness was accentuated, until 
when our eyes had forgotten light the darkness took 
on a luminosity of its own, showing in vague outline 
families congregated in windows, seeking a breeze. 
And I wondered what it would be like to live behind 
the window-bars of a little one-story house, with 
only a painted grating to separate me from the 


passing life of the streets. 
127 


128 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Through ‘‘the place of the coaches’’ and out by 
way of the gate under the clock, we would wander 
over to the Plaza de la Independencia, there to 
saunter up and down between the gleaming marble 
busts of the martyrs; martyrs, who a century ago, 
met their death here, each victim accompanied by 
his priest. 

‘‘Many times I promised them pardon,’’ wrote the 
captain-general of the royalists on the day before 
the execution of these patriots. ‘‘I opened and 
offered ways for their reconciliation . . . but deaf 
to my persuasions they boldly undertook resistance 
against the monarchy.’’ 

Yet now, because they thus scorned to save their 
lives, they live in the plaza which is outside the walls. 
And once a week the band plays and people gather » 
to stroll, as we did, between the two rows of their 
pale busts. 

Sometimes we would wander across to the market 
where by day sail-boats and canoes are moored, 
dugout canoes as primitive as that from which the 
legendary Rebolledo purchased his enchanted hens; 
and where, on Mondays, the weekly hydroplane from 
Barranquilla swoops down to alight among the sail- 
boats and canoes. A little further on, in front of 
the moving-picture theater, we would often pick 
up one of the carriages which stand waiting in the 





LA POPA 


Se 





NIGHT 129 


splash of light outside the roofless and crumbling 
monastery which is the theater. 

And then in a moment its light and ee music 
would be left behind as the carriage trotted off into 
the darkness, headed for the suburb of Manga. 

There are no street-lights in Manga. Fireflies 
make a brave and lovely attempt to take their place; 
fireflies sparkling in the dense dark foliage of 
banana, flamboyant and bougainvillea, which seems 
almost to smother the pretty villas. People walk- 
ing about Manga do not, however, depend upon the 
fireflies. 

A sudden flash in the dark will show that we are 
passing a pedestrian. These flashes of electric 
pocket-torches come and go, here and there in the 
night, each citizen, like each firefly, seeming equipped 
with his own private light-plant. 

Although the roads of Manga are thus dark, the 
villas themselves, set far back under their heavy 
foliage, are as brilliantly lit as though they were 
hotels. Under the very heart of the glare, in the 
big halls which open through the houses, are circles 
of cane and scrollwork rocking-chairs. And there 
the great affectionate families of Colombia rock and 
talk, while outside in the silky dark frogs serenade 
and fireflies compete with electric pocket-torches. 

I know that in the chairs under the lights they 


130 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


are all there, all those family units whose Spanish 
equivalents I have so glibly at the end of my tongue. 

As we drive up and down the streets of Manga 
under the dark rustling trees, we pass the charming 
Miramar Club with its roofless dancing pavilion built 
out over the water, and the tennis-courts and the 
Club la Popa. All this is new, all part of that in- 
sistent suggestion of coming change which, like a 
prophecy, saturates the air of Colombia. 


In one of the handsome villas we looked one night 
upon a dance, the open architecture of the modern 
tropics frankly exhibiting the dance to any one who 
cared to look on. And it was evidently the fashion 
to look on; so much the fashion that stalls were set 
up in the street outside, ready to provide these on- 
lookers with refreshment: the gathered crowd form- 
ing, as it were, a party outside a party. 

And the outer party seemed to have fully as 
merry a time as the one within; for the villa not 
only furnished orchestral music but provided also 
the spectacle of gay Parisian frocks dancing under 
a festive glare of light. These things the street 
party was free to enjoy, with no one commanding 
that they ‘‘move on.”’ 

The same night we came by chance upon another 
dance, this time in the poor quarter of the suburb 


NIGHT 131 


which is called El Pie de la Popa, because of its 
being at the foot of the hill of La Popa. 

The house giving this second dance was small and 
close, in the old style of the Spanish tropics, with 
only a narrow door through which one might see the 
surging crowd dancing in stifling, unventilated heat. 

Here, too, stands were set up in the street outside. 
There were tables provided with games, others with 
drinks, and one at which coffee and empanadas were 
to be served: each table lit by a more or less smoky 
kerosene lantern. 

Watching the girl in charge of the refreshment- 
stall, I evolved a recipe for the making of 
empanadas. 

You must first, if you would make a proper em- 
panada, be young and brown and small; your black 
hair must be smoothly parted and coiled low in the 
style of a Madonna; in it you must have arranged 
clusters of fresh flowers; there must be little gold 
ear-rings in your ears and a gold chain with a charm 
around your neck—your neck which will, of course, 
be bronze. And you must wear a ruffled, flower- 
sprayed lawn frock which you have crisply 
laundered. 

Otherwise you cannot make empanadas as I saw 
them made in the soft starry night in the street out- 
side the dance. 


132 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


As to equipment, you will have a bare wooden 
table on which smokes a lantern, and your table will 
be covered with rows of cups; for coffee must be 
served with empanadas. You will have beside you 
two charcoal fires, over one of which stands the five- 
gallon oil-tin in which the coffee has been brewed, 
and over the other the kettle of hot lard in which 
the empanadas are to be fried when you have them 
ready. 

You will take from another oil-tin a small quantity 
of corn-meal dough, rolling it in your hands before 
you place it on the round, saucer-sized green leaf, 
where you must pat it thinly and evenly over the 
leaf, before sprinkling it with chopped and seasoned 
meat. Then, folding over the leaf, you will press it 
quite flat with quick firm pats of your hands, which, 
you remember, are small and brown. 

And now when you remove the leaf there is a 
tart-shaped empanada, which you drop into the 
steaming lard. 

While it fries you swiftly shape another, patting 
it with swift deft little pats, and spilling never a 
crumb of anything. One by one you thus prepare 
your empanadas; and when they have fried a golden 
brown, you fish them out of the lard with a big flat 
ladle. | 

You will work very rapidly, since you must be 


NIGHT 133 


ready to serve the guests when they come trooping 
out between dances; for in this poor quarter guests 
and the onlookers together purchase and consume 
their refreshments at lantern-lit: stalls in the street. 

That is how you make empanadas in the warm soft 
night under the sparkling sky. And if you are such 
a small brown creature as I describe you will raise 
the simple performance to a place among the arts. 

‘‘T must tell you how beautifully you do it,’’ I said. 

‘‘Thanks, mi sevora, but my work is no more than 
regular.’ 


And every night at ten o’clock the big bell in Car- 
tagena’s cathedral booms, slow and heavy. 

‘Why does it ring??’ 

‘<The bell so rings because, in the days when 
enemies threatened, it was the custom at ten o’clock 
to close and lock the city gates. It will ring again 
at four in the morning, for then were the gates of 
the city opened.”’ | 

‘‘But now there are no longer enemies, and the 
gates are never closed.” 

“True, sefiora, but the bell still rings,’’ your 
coachman will tell you. ‘‘It rings because it used 
to.”’ 


CHAPTER VIII 
HAD FATE TURNED UP THE CARDS 


HREE hundred years ago the monk Paredes 
Ty" prayed in Bogota, and praying heard the 
command, ‘‘Descend to Cartagena, and there found 
a convent of your order some distance from the 
town on a peak which you will see there.’’ 

Had Fate then, like a Gipsy, turned up the cards 
to predict this monk’s future, she would have paused 
long, bending low over the cards and muttering to 
herself, ‘‘ Yes, there is a vision and a voice.”’ 

By spluttering candle-light would she have dealt 
the cards: hearts and diamonds, spades—‘‘ The monk 
obeys the voice.’’ Spades and clubs and diamonds 
—‘‘There is a journey. The monk goes upon a 
journey. He climbs high mountains. He floats 
down a great river and tramps through jungle. The 
journey is weary, but he does not go alone. Two 
brother monks accompany him: Bartholomé de los 
Angeles and Miguel Santa Marfa.’’ 

So the cards would have fallen; and in their fall- 
ing ‘ate would have seen many months pass before 


Paredes would have reached at last the far city 
134 


HAD FATE TURNED UP THE CARDS 135 


where he was to found a convent of his order. She 
would have seen the three monks arrive at the 
walled city by the sea; three black-robed monks 
full of the tale of a vision, of a voice, and of an 
arduous journey. Many of the listeners who 
gathered to hear make offers of a site for this new 
monastery of the order of San Agustin: but the 
vision shows that the monastery must crown a peak 
outside the city walls. 

Huddled in her shawl, Fate would have seen upon 
the cards such a peak, the peak which is called La 
Popa because it rises from the bay like the high- 
pooped ships which three hundred years ago sailed 
the uncharted seas. 


Shivering in the cold of the high plateau of 


Bogota, Fate would have dealt the cards, letting 
them flutter noiselessly from her hand to the table 
where they lay under the candle, kings and queens 
and knaves. . . . A vision and a journey; three 
stranger monks in a walled city by the sea; a hill 
like the stern of a caravel. 

King's and queens and knaves. Paredes, the monk, 
was to beware. For Fate would have seen evil on 
the cards, 

‘‘The evil is on the peak of La Popa. A demon 
possesses the peak . . . here and here and here, as 
the cards fall, for the demon appears in many 


136 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


shapes ; coming now in a cloud of mosquitos, so dense 
a cloud that the sun itself is hidden and none can 
live for their molesting. Again the demon comes in 
a tempest which uproots trees. He shakes the earth. 
He speaks in the voice of monkeys and the hiss of 
serpents. 

‘“The cards are evil . . . evil. There is a hut on 
the summit of La Popa, where Indians worship the 
demon in the form of a goat. They worship and play 
upon instruments of shells. Paredes enters the hut, 
and the Indians flee before his anger. The goat he 
hurls over the precipice of the peak. 

‘Now the cards show money. The monk’s hands 
are full of gold. Everywhere on the cards there is 
luck. With labor and gold the monastery rises brick 
by brick upon the summit. It stands there a fair 
white temple overlooking the sea. But Paredes is 
troubled, for there is no image of the Virgin in its 
chapel. The great ladies of Cartagena offer such 
images from their private oratorios, but none satisfy 
Paredes. He seeks an image with the eyes of a 
picture painted by Raphaelo Urbinas. In Bogota 
Paredes has seen this picture, which is called ‘The 
Beautiful Gardener.’ Now, scourging himself, he 
prays to find an image with the eyes of this Lovely 
Gardener.”’ 

Shuffle and deal again: clubs and spades and the 


HAD FATE TURNED UP THE CARDS 137 


queen of hearts; so would the cards have fallen had 
Fate turned Gipsy to foretell the future of Paredes. 

““Tn the Street of the Dames,’’ she would have con- 
tinued, ‘‘Paredes passes with Bartholomé and 
Miguel. There is a lady on a balcony who calls: 
‘Pardon, padres, but I heard you were in search 
of a Virgin. I shall be glad to give you the one which 
is pictured in your imagination.’ 

‘‘The monks enter. ‘Show it,’ they beg, but the 
lady who has come to the head of the stairs to meet 
them replies: 

<< <«That is not now possible, but if you will return 
upon the day which I set, you will find the image. 
Coming upon that day, you must enter, though the 
doors be closed. Enter, look through the rooms, and 
you will find your image.’ 

“<The lady then goes into her room and closes the 
door. Outside the three monks remain long amazed, 
never moving until they are aroused by a distant 
bell. 

‘<< ‘Brothers,’ whispers Paredes. ‘Brothers, know 
that the eyes of the lady are an exact copy—’ 

“¢ ‘Of what?’ 

‘“<¢An exact copy of the eyes of the Beautiful 
Gardener.’ ”’ 

Once more would Fate have shuffled and dealt: 
deuces and treys and aces. 


138 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘‘The three monks again enter the house of the 
lady in the Street of the Dames. They knock, but 
there is no answer. They open; the room is empty, 
even of furniture. They knock and enter a second 
room, where upon a small table they find a figure of 
the Virgin, a little figure not much more than two 
feet high, a little figure which seems to smile at 
them with a beatified sweetness. The three monks 
fall upon their knees. . . .”’ 

Kings and knaves, treys and deuces. 

‘* ‘Brothers,’ Paredes is saying, ‘go out into the 
city to spread the tidings. I remain to worship.’ ”’ 

Dealing and prophesying, Fate would have found 
the cards good. She would have seen that the people 
of Cartagena came to adore, bringing flowers from 
their gardens until every garden was bare and the 
Little Virgin of La Popa was buried under blossoms. 
Fate would then have seen her carried in procession 
to her shrine in the chapel of the monastery which 
crowns the peak which is outside the walls. 

But did Fate wish a monk’s blessing, she would at 
this point have brought to an end her reading of the 
future. She would have prophesied no further than 
the flowery processicn which bore the Little Virgin 
to her shrine on the summit. 

Yet there would have remained in the hand of Fate 
one last card. ... 


HAD FATE TURNED UP THE CARDS 1389 


In this story of La Popa and of the monk Paredes, 
tradition has long ago so fused fact and fancy that 
it is now impossible accurately to separate what is 
history from what is legend. But after all does 
it greatly matter? For are not legends the facts 
of the imagination, and are not the fancies of a 
people as essential a part of their spirit as are their 
deeds? 

The legends of a country are its dreams, from 
which much of its character may be derived; as 
from the dreams of an individual the psychologist 
constructs the life-history of his patient. They are 
part of its quality, of the elusive thing we call per- 
sonality. : 

With a knowledge of its traditions La Popa be- 
comes something more than an eminence from which 
to gaze widely over sea and bay and tropic little 
city. With such memory of what has come and gone, 
one is aware, as one climbs, of an invisible world 
whose presence is nevertheless so keenly felt that 
the mere earthward flutter of a leaf seems to startle 
some lurking thing which is everywhere and yet 
nowhere. Fragments of sentences, words uttered 
centuries ago, seem on the verge of being spoken 
again. In just a moment, monk or pirate will step 
out of that invisible world to speak as he once spoke 
on the hill of La Popa; as though nothing ever truly 


140 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


ceased to be, but waited always; dim in the gather- 
ing shadows, but nevertheless always there, waiting, 

This climbing of La Popa is exacted of the visitor 
to Cartagena; for people who never thought of doing 
it themselves are sure to say, ‘‘Of course, you will 
climb La Popa.’’ 

With the passing of the days in Cartagena we had 
learned the idiosyncrasies of its climate ; discovering 
that in the month of July, which is the short dry 
season between two rainy Seasons, one feels more 
energetic after four o’clock in the afternoon than 
one does in the early morning. We found also that 
one becomes gradually accustomed to the heat, so 
that after a few days the prospect of ascending La 
Popa no longer seems an impossibly wilting under- 
taking’. 

Thus late one afternoon we left our carriage to 
follow on foot the old Spanish road, now fallen into 
disrepair but once a highway of some pretentions, 
built of porous gray-white stone with here and there 
the traces of what had evidently been drains. | 

The road passes under trees, frequently forget- 
ting that it is a road and becoming no more than a 
scrambling rocky foot-path, and then, as though re- 
membering its past, widening out into a highway. 
And as it climbs it pauses before an old shrine of 
the same coral-like rock which paves the road, but 


HAD FATE TURNED UP THE CARDS 141 


the niche of the shrine stands empty save for a heap 
of small wooden crosses left there by the pious. The 
road pauses again before a great white cross, which 
is not old like the road and the shrine but an honor 
recently erected to Our Lady of La Popa. 

Beyond this cross the vista of Cartagena appears 
and disappears, threaded in and out through the 
trees, as the road twists and winds. 

And then quite suddenly there is the monastery, 
‘reached from the side of the hill which is furthest 
from the city. 

There are low white one-story buildings, or guest- 
houses, designed to shelter the pilgrims who once 
came to the monastery, attracted by the fame of its 
miraculous little Virgin. One of these buildings now 
houses a negro caretaker who is also a watchman; 
perhaps entirely a watchman, since in truth little 
care seems to be taken; and the man’s duties, we 
gather, consist in telephoning to the custom-house 
whenever he sights a vessel making for the harbor. 

There is this watchman and his wife and the 
telephone, things alive and of the present in the 
midst of ruin and disintegration. For ruined and 
deserted is the monastery which, from its peak, 
dominates the little walled town, dominates the azure 
of the land-encircled harbor, dominates the surging 
frothy Caribbean green along the coast, dominating 


142 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


even the distant sapphire depths of the horizon; 
dominant, although in its desertion startled bats 
fly in and out at the creaking of doors on rusty 
hinges, and at the sound of our footsteps on the 
stone flagging under the arches of the cloisters. 

And upon the occasion of our visit, there was also 
a terrified snake which darted wildly hither and 
thither along the courtyard wall in frantic effort to 
escape. 

‘*San Antonio!’’ cried the watchman’s wife. 

‘*Kill him! Kill him!”’ reiterated the urchin who 
was our companion and camera-bearer. 

‘‘San Antonio!’’ 

‘‘He is a snake supremely venomous,’’ was the 
watchman’s comment, when he held it up for inspec- 
tion after life had been beaten from the swiftly 
darting body. 

**Fatal!’’ echoed the woman. 

Watchman and woman and child agreed that it 
was a most poisonous snake which had been killed, 
but none believed it to be anything more than a 
snake. Yet only three hundred years ago the monk 
Paredes would have seen in it a demon—perhaps 
Satanas himself; a demon who might have appeared 
the day before in a storm far out on the treacherous 
Caribbean, or in a black host of mosquitos. . . . 
The demon had a hundred guises. 


HAD FATE TURNED UP THE CARDS 143 


But now, in the miracle of development of the 
human mind, a serpent has at last come to be only 
a serpent; to be greatly feared if venomous, but still 
only a serpent. The devil is not so important a 
person as he used to be. 

Urchin and woman remained to exclaim over its 
lifeless body, ‘‘Fatal!’’ and ‘‘San Antonio!’’ while 
with heavy iron key the watchman let us into the 
chapel, quiet and deserted like the monastery and 
the houses of the pilgrims, but in striking contrast 
to their dilapidation, for here no doors sagged on 
hinges or were missing altogether. All was so neat 
and well kept that the desolation of the monastery 
seemed an incredible mistake. Surely if one stepped 
back through the door one would be in a well-ordered 
convent where monks in black-hooded robes walked 
up and down muttering over the rosaries which 
slipped bead by bead through their fingers! 

On the altar of this neat chapel was a little doll 
of a Virgin, a tiny figure not much more than two 
feet high, a little wooden figure standing in an arched 
niche against a background of pale blue, and wearing 
a trailing white gown richly embroidered in gold. 

The luster of this little Virgin’s fame may never 
again be so bright as when the old buccaneer Dam- 
pier wrote that whatever misfortune came to the 
pirates hovering menacingly off the coast of 


144 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Colombia they attributed it to the intervention of 
this tiny image of La Popa. They would watch for 
the first glimpse of that hill which, from the sea, 
stood up like the stern of some colossal galleon, a 
galleon which had lost its masts: watching with fear 
lest the Virgin of La Popa send disaster upon the 
enemies who threatened her city. 

Perhaps too, she will never equal the glory of that 
day, three hundred years ago, when Cartagena fell 
on its knees to implore deliverance from the pesti- 
lence which devastated it. What gifts they made her 
when the disease had subsided! There was a ring 
set with a rosette of nine emeralds, a cross of gold 
filigree, a veil of hammered gold, ear-rings of 
emeralds, a collar of gold set with pearls; and there 
were many garments of rich fabric. 

But although the pinnacle of her fame seems past, 
there is the new cross gleaming white half-way up 
the hill; and every year, on February 2, Cartagena 
climbs La Popa in festive procession to light candles 
and say masses before its little Virgin of many mira- 
cles. It was at this very feast, which is called the 
feast of Candelaria, that the father of my small 
friend of the bévedas had been wounded by a bull, 
not that he was a bull-fighter but merely ‘‘conducting 
the bull.’’ 

So because men have not forgotten her, the Little 








TREES GROW FROM SEEPAGE HOLES IN THE MASONRY 
OF SAN FELIPE 


HAD FATE TURNED UP THE CARDS 145 


Virgin may smile in her niche, although outside the 
chapel bats flutter in the shadows of a deserted mon- 
astery; and vultures make their headquarters upon 
the crest of the precipice which tradition calls the 
Leap of the Goat, because from there Paredes cast 
the unfortunate animal which he had discovered be- 
ing worshiped by Indians. 

Seeking light and air, after the cloistered gloom, I 
left the monastery by a side door, coming like a 
sudden apparition upon scores of somber birds 
perching on the edge of the cliff: birds which took 
instant and noiseless flight, dumbly hurling them- 
selves into the abyss, leaving me alone upon the 
summit trodden bare by their feet. 

Here La Popa drops sheer to the sea-level plain. 
To the left a single-track railroad line wanders off 
through marshes. To the right rises the old fort- 
ress of San Felipe. Below the vultures circle and 
soar. 

One by one familiar haunts are identified: there is 
Pie de La Popa, shown in rectangles of thatch and 
tile; and beyond is the smiling island of Manga with 
the roofs of the villas standing up like rocks from 
a sea of foliage; and farther off is Cartagena, seen 
in a pastel haze from which emerge the towers and 
domes of its churches. And there is the opal bay 
across whose translucent surface the trade-wind 


146 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


drives white-sailed boats, with far off the Boca Chica 
between whose fortresses our steamer had sailed 
into the waiting wonder. And beyond . . . beyond 
is the restless sea and the quiet horizon. 

For three centuries the Convent of La Popa has 
looked out upon this scene. ‘‘Passed,’’ as the old 
books say, ‘‘passed the years’’; and in their passing 
monk and pirate, monarchist and revolutionist by 
turns occupied La Popa. Vernon and Pointis, 
Morillo and Bolivar, all at one time or another made 
it their stronghold. Cannon had replaced bells as 
silence now replaces cannon; until at last there are 
only the bats and the vultures, and perhaps a lurking 
serpent, and the noise of wind swinging doors on 
rusty hinges. 

But it is rumored that on the night of the Faithful 
Dead a ghostly funeral service is held in the monas- 
tery; the funeral of a monk who three hundred 
years ago prayed in Bogota, and, praying, saw a 
vision; the phantom funeral of a monk who, having 
obeyed the voice of his vision, founding upon the 
peak outside the walls of a far city a convent of his 
order, went out with zeal to convert neighboring 
Indians; the funeral of a monk whom the Indians 
murdered, burning his body, but returning his head 
to the convent he had built; the ghostly funeral 
then of the ghostly head of a murdered monk. 


HAD FATE TURNED UP THE CARDS 14% 


It is this card which Fate, had she turned sooth- 
sayer, would not have dealt in the cold forgotten 
candle-light. She would never have said to Paredes: 
‘“T see here, upon this last card, a funeral procession 
pass through the deserted cloisters of a monastery 
which falls into ruins. They pass to bury the bodi- 
less head of a monk, and the head is the head of 
Paredes.”’ 


CHAPTER IX 
THREE ENDINGS AND A BEGINNING 


HE coachman had frequently asked, ‘* And what 
4h day will you visit San Felipe?”’ 

San Felipe must be visited because, even more 
than the walls, it bears witness to the power which 
was Spain, that power of which the man of mixed 
race is at once proud and resentful. 

Standing in the sentry-box which crowns this old 
fortress, it is easy to comprehend, and even to share, 
both the pride and the resentment; for the magni- 
tude of the work is as great as was the tyranny of 
its execution. 

In our scramble up through a tangle of vicious 
thorny shrubs, we explored as we climbed; follow- 
ing to their abrupt mysterious ends the tunnels 
with which the hill is riddled; tunnels into which 
deep shafts let light and air from above, and 
through which escape might be made by means of 
ladders. But it is standing in the sentry-box on the 
summit that the immensity of the undertaking is 
realized. 


Thus long ago did a Spanish soldier’s eye sweep 
148 


THREE ENDINGS AND A BEGINNING 149 


the panorama of city and bay: the harbor with its 
large mouth filled in to prohibit the passing of ships, 
and the narrow entrance of the Boca Chica over 
which the forts of San Fernando and San José stood 
guard. His roving gaze would have paused com- 
placent on the inner forts before it passed on to 
the encircling walls which protected the city; dwell- 
ing long upon the bastion of the bdvedas where the 
wall was strongest because at all costs the reservoir 
must be defended. If enemies had landed forces 
farther down the coast the guns of that bastion could 
have mowed them down as they approached the 
along the beach of Cabrero. His gaze must have 
lingered there confidently before it passed on to the 
wall back of the Church of San Pedro Claver, where 
more guns menaced any landing on the beach. 

Against foes arriving from the interior, Carta- 
gena relied upon the cannon of San Felipe, and it 
was therefore the slope of the fortress turned away 
from the city which was the most powerfully forti- 
fied ; heavy masonry covering the slope, sentry-boxes | 
facing all directions, and tunnels perforating the 
hill. 

But all disintegrates; trees and shrubs grow from 
seepage holes in the masonry, while time and 
weather slowly obliterate from the cannon the crown 
of Spain. San Felipe is even more desolate than La 


150 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Popa; for here there is not even the negro watchman 
and his telephone; there are only astonished little 
goats leaping perilously about on the precipitous 
masonry walls. 


And upon another day we visited San Fernando; 
for among the pleasant results of our finally pre- 
sented letters of introduction was the use of a 
launch which would take us to the Boca Chica, 
twelve miles away. 

So it came about that we passed under the arch 
of the old painted water-gate where little green 
shrubs grow out of crevices in the buff and blue and 
rose. But we no longer felt grotesquely out of pro- 
portion as when sailing on a Fruit steamer we had 
dwarfted its once-imposing forts: for we now fell 
into the picture as human beings, minus the exag- 
gerated prestige of modern invention. Passing in 
thus, we found ourselves in scale with the sixteenth 
century: the fort no longer impressing us as a fasci- 
nating toy, but as a real fort with a forty-foot-thick 
wall surrounding an almost circular courtyard; a 
wall punctuated by doors leading into vaulted cham- 
bers; connecting chambers through which it is pos- 
sible to make an inner circuit of the fort. 

On the top of the walls we walked inside an in- 
closing parapet, stopping at intervals to look 


THREE ENDINGS AND A BEGINNING 151 


through the empty embrasures where cannon once 
swept land and sea, and mounting the little steps 
beside these embrasures as men long ago mounted 
them, stationed there to report whether the aim of 
the guns were true, and what was the resulting dam- 
age to the foe. We gazed thus out to sea, across 
the Boca Chica to the crumbling fortress of San 
José, or over a deep moat to the green outstretched 
arm of the land. 

And while we explored the sun beat down hot, hot, 
paling even the blue of the sky. But we had grown 
so accustomed to Cartagena’s sun that regardless 
of its fierce glare we made many times the circuit 
of these walls of San Fernando. 

The bay was full of quivering color; mauve along 
the shore, clear sea-green farther out; with here 
and there deep mulberry cloud-shadows resting on 
the water. An Indian, standing while he paddled 
his canoe, glided silently from the bay into the 
moat, gliding so quietly that only a hurrying tribe 
of tiny black and tan fish gave warning of his 
coming. 

A modern lighthouse rises from one end of the 
wall, while in the deep shady entrance beyond the 
water-gate three or four mulatto men were dozing in 
the heat: but the fort, in the very essence of its 
personality, ignored the lighthouse and the drowsy 


152 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


men; concerning itself only with memories; refight- 
ing old battles, heroically triumphant or equally 
heroically vanquished; recalling perhaps as its dear- 
est memory, not one of the victories but a defeat; 
going back to the year 1697 when the combined fleets 
of the pirates Pointis and Morgan took and sacked 
the city. 

Surely the memory of a little fort would love to 
dwell upon the overwhelming majority of that at- 
tacking force whose combatants were numbered in 
thousands, and memory would smile proudly upon 
its little company of sixty-eight under the com- 
mand of Don Sancho Jimeno. It would hear again 
the messenger sent by Pointis demanding sur- 
render, and again hear the ringing answer which 
echoed in the fort, ‘‘Say to the Sefor Baron de 
Pointis that he is at liberty to take the fort ~~ those 
methods worthy of gentlemen.’’ 

The fort would certainly not forget that when 
Don Sancho directed the resistance from the parapet 
his wife stood at his side. 

Of course in the tradition this brave Spanish lady 
was beautiful; for how else, three hundred years 
ago, could a lady have been heroic? Therefore, the 
fort loves to remember her beautiful, as she stood 
upon the parapet with the fire of battle about her. 
Certainly she was beautiful. 








WHERE DON SANCHO DEFIED POINTIS 





THREE ENDINGS AND A BEGINNING 153 


The fort recollects also the following dawn when 
forces from the land swarmed up ladders to scale 
its walls, remembering how its cannon struck them 
down, and the courage with which the enemy pressed 
on until by sheer force of numbers they had over- 
come resistance. 

And if the -old fort could puff at the pipe of 
reminiscence like a garrulous veteran in a chimney- 
corner, it would impart the speech of tradition; for 
it would remember the very intonation of the words 
in which the victorious Pointis haughtily addressed 
himself to Don Sancho as he stood waiting with his 
Castilian lady by his side. 

‘You are my prisoner. Hand over your 
sword.’’ 

But Don Sancho’s sword, the fort would remem- 
ber, lay broken on the ground. 

‘And where is the garrison?’’ 

‘We were sixty-eight, sefior, but there remain but 
twenty of us in condition to serve.’’ 

‘Sixty-eight! With such a number you dared re- 
sist me?”’ 

‘‘Sefor Baron, the doing of one’s duty does not 
depend upon the number of one’s enemies.’’ 

And there in the white, hot light, with the glit- 
tering bay on one side and the sea upon the other, 
Pointis, unbuckled his sword and presented it to 


154 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Don Sancho. ‘‘At your side, sefior, it will be more 
greatly honored than it has ever been before.’’ 

As for the brave lovely lady, of course the French 
pirate fell upon his knees to kiss her hand. 

With such fine dreams the little fort of San Fer- 
nando sleeps in the sun, oblivious of the presence of 
a new lighthouse and of mulatto men lounging in 
its entrance. 

It dreams and, while it dreams, falls ever so slowly 
into ruin. In the courtyard, from the walls, wherever 
it can find foothold, a little green shrub has sprung 
up, about whose small white flowers many butter- 
flies hover, languid in the sun; orange and brown 
and yellow; or white with sharp black edges, as 
though they might have been mourning-cards la- 
menting the passing of ancient splendors. 

When we spoke our voices echoed and reéchoed 
across the walls and in the dark deserted vaults, 
foul with the odor of countless bats, whose high 
shrill squeaks also echoed and reéchoed. 

But nothing woke the slumbering fort which 
dreamed of the vanished glory of an ended era. 


If you say to your coachman that you want to 
visit the cacimbas, he will understand, and he will 
drive you out past the dock, west along the arm of 
land which leads to the Boca Grande, until you come 


THREE ENDINGS AND A BEGINNING 155 


to the little thatched settlement where women dig 
holes in the sand for water, calling such holes 
cacimbas. 

It is so tiny a village that it has neither church 
nor shop; so small that it does not pay the water- 
man to jog out from the city with his gaily painted 
water-barrel. And since there are no fresh-water 
streams on the arm which has thrown itself out 
around the bay, the women must dig in the sand 
for water. 

The little cluster of huts owe their existence to 
fish; on the left where the salt water of the bay 
ripples and gurgles fishing boats are drawn up 
along the shore, and on the right the Caribbean rolls 
in and breaks, rolls in and breaks, breaking on the 
hot beach. In these waters is an everlasting supply 
of fish to satisfy the everlasting demand of Carta- 
gena where year after year fish appears twice a day 
on the menu. And so the little huts of men sprang 
up to be near the fish. 

On the morning when we went to see what cacim- 
bas were like, the palms hung limp leaves over the 
huts as though they waited for a breeze to come 
and turn them to fans; and out of the huts poured 
the population to see what we were like. 

We were interested in the cacimbas, the coachman 
explained, and ‘‘meester’’ would like to photograph 


156 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


them. There was a general laugh, and the little 
naked, round-eyed children drew nearer, forgetting 
their shyness. Here was an adventure, a ‘‘meester”’ 
coming in a carriage to photograph cacimbas! 

Thus in a body we inspected a cacimba, and the 
woman who had been digging when we arrived went 
obligingly back to her work to show us how it was 
done. 

She shoveled with a scoop made of half of a 
large round gourd, throwing up the earth about her 
until, like an ant-lion, she stood at the bottom of 
an inverted cone, throwing up gourdful after gourd- 
ful until she was shoulder deep. 

Meanwhile the saucer-eyed statuettes of children 
had lost all sense of strangeness and hovered close 
about us. And the men, powerful brown men in 
cotton trousers rolled up above their knees—the 
men were amused. So were the barefoot calico- 
frocked women with their babies in their arms, tiny 
naked babies; all just as they might have been a 
hundred years ago, save for the fact that the cloth 
of their garments was now machine-woven. 

And then the woman in the cacimba stopped dig- 
ging to exclaim: ‘‘Muire! here is the water!’’ With 
the gourd which was her recent shovel she dipped 
from the bubbling apex where she stood. ‘‘See,’’ 
she said, ‘‘water, most pure and clear!’’ She spoke 


THREE ENDINGS AND A BEGINNING 157 


with affectionate wonder; her very tone seeming to 
bless it for bubbling at the bottom of the cone which 
she had so patiently excavated with only her gourd 
for a shovel. 

When we returned to the carriage we found that 
the village had brought out to see us its last inhabit- 
ant. Held up between two young women something 
moved, an emaciated something which had once been 
woman. It moved slowly, stiffly, the two young 
women supporting it on either side. It stepped 
jerkily, as a mechanical toy steps when it is so 
nearly run down that there is scarcely force left to 
move it. Thus the figure approached, rigid and 
groping, with on its face no fleeting phantom of 
expression. 

‘“She is ninety-eight years old,’’ I heard the coach- 
man explaining; and while I looked upon those 
ninety-eight years of living in a thatched hut, of 
. sleeping on a mat and of digging in the sand for 
water, ninety-eight years of being a primitive 
woman, I wondered about Colombia in that distant 
time, when she who moved with such brittle effort 
had come into the world a soft, flaccid being. 


A century ago ... I slowly realized . . . Colom- 
bia had but just won her independence from Spain 
. and there was no more Inquisition . . . There 


was even talk of freeing slaves. And while this old 


158 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


woman was a child, learning to walk, as softly 
unsteady then as she was now rigidly uncertain, men 
had been fighting; Colombian shedding the blood of 
Colombian to decide whether federation or centrali- 
zation of power were the better form of govern- 
ment. And when she was old enough to frolic in 
the waves, the Union of Colombia, Venezuela, and 
Ecuador was disrupted, and Bolivar, the liberator, 
broken in heart and body, had come to Cartagena, 
to pass a month in a little house at the foot of La 
Popa, before he went on to Santa Marta to die. And 
while she helped her mother to dig cacumbas, out in 
the great world miraculous dreams of steamship 
and locomotive were coming true. 

Gradually these inventions found their way to 
Colombia. There was a day when the first steam- 
vessel entered the harbor of Cartagena; when the 
railroad came to connect the city with the Magda- 
lena River; and when matches appeared and sewing- 
machines and electric lights, automobiles and tele- 
phones. One by one these discoveries of the great in- 
ventive nineteenth and twentieth centuries reached 
Cartagena. But the groping old woman, who slowly 
becomes a skeleton while she yet lives, has probably 
thought little of all those inventions; for the prim- 
itive mind, like the child mind, does not discrimi- 
nate, finding all things equally new and equally 


THREE ENDINGS AND A BEGINNING 159 


strange. And after all, if one did not travel on 
steamships and if any little naked child served to 
carry one’s messages, why were such inventions 
important? 

Therefore, as the girl became a woman, it was 
her man, and one by one her children, that were 
truly important and wonderful to her. Of course 
it was also important and much to be marveled at 
that slaves were freed; that the sea never failed to 
supply fish, or the cacimbas water, if one dug deep 
enough. 

Now, as she tottered with painful effort, did any 
of the warm past live in her old heart? Or had 
the children of her flesh grown vague; as vague as 
grandchildren; as removed as great-grandchildren? 
Was even the dear young past now dim, dim like 
the present, so that to recall it her mind moved 
stiffly, uncertainly, as did her legs when she tried 
to walk? 

Watching this woman, who seemed incredibly 
older than Colombia itself, nothing seemed to matter 
that did not touch and alter the facts of illness and 
age and death. 

And I heard the coachman saying, with the fa- 
miliar pointing gesture of his whip, ‘‘On that little 
island ... yonder... just a few yards from the 
shore... an aéroplane was wrecked two years ago.”’ 


160 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


I remembered having been told something about 
the unlucky collapse of the first attempt to establish 
a Cartagena-Barranquilla air service. What a cli- 
max to her ninety-eight years to have an aéroplane 
smashed almost at the door of that old woman’s hut! 

‘‘Yes, mi senora,’’ the coachman continued, ‘‘yes, 
the plane fell among those trees. It carried two 
passengers. The aviator and one of the passengers 
were killed, and the other so badly injured that they 
thought for six months he’d die. They had to ampu- 
tate a leg; but they took him to Panama and gave 
him a silver leg... . Now he can dance.’’ 

Thus the coachman put into concrete form the 
sum of my thoughts. ‘‘Now he can dance.’’ And 
that is the miracle for which we cry: we want our 
hearts to dance. 


There was a crescent moon in the sky, hanging 
there like a silver bow which has shot the night full 
of stars, silver to match itself. And we sat upon 
the wall of Cartagena enjoying the cool night wind 
which brought with it drifting fragments of memory, 
of things read and things seen. The wind blew 
these memories about as it blows the autumn leaves 
which it has shaken from the tree. 

There was the memory of the priest Pedro Claver 
who pleased his God by denying himself the view 





BENEATH THE FORTRESS OF SAN FELIPE 





THREE ENDINGS AND A BEGINNING 161 


from the wall and the refreshment of the breeze; 
there was the old woman of the cacimbas and the 
sense of ending which she typified; and there was 
a vague something, new, not yet taken definite form, 
an invisible something blowing in the wind... the 
future blowing in the wind. 

While we sat swinging our feet, a barefoot father 
came bringing his little son, lifting him to stand 
on the parapet; and standing thus his baby gaze 
was on a level with mine, so that I saw with his 
young eyes. 

We looked out upon the dark profoundity of the 
sea. 

‘“Agua,’’ said the father, indicating the water, 
and, ‘‘Agua,’’ repeated the sweet flute of the little 
voice. 

The water lay at our feet as still as painted water, 
and upon it the child saw no outline of full-rigged 
slave-ship, with dark masts and swelling sails and 
far-off glimmer of light; no ship in whose hold a 
terrified cargo moaned that the white man would 
make gunpowder from their bones. 

‘‘Agua,’’ the treble voice reiterated, as though to 
fasten the word to the mysterious beauty of the 
thing. 

The brilliant sky hung low over the water, com- 
pelling attention, 


162 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘La luna,” the father addressed the lovely won- 
der of the moon. 

‘“‘Ta luna,’’ the child echoed like some trusting 
night-bird. 

Behind us, the lighthouse on the wall made an 
ambitious start skyward and then went no further 
than the brave flare of its own light. 

‘‘El faro,”’ the father explained, and ‘‘Faro,’’ the 
child murmured, staring up with marveling eyes. 

Water and moon and lighthouse . . . the world 
was a strangely glorious place to a little new thing, 
a beginning thing; beginning where the old woman 
left off, and going on into the pearly mist which is 
the future. 


CHAPTER X 


BY SEA-SLED 


slons appeared on the dock promptly at six 
o’clock in the morning. There a crowd had gath- 
ered, for the sea-sled was a novelty. 

It had been shipped from the United States and 
was now proceeding to the upper Magdalena River, 
where a sea-sled service was to be initiated between 
Girardot and Beltran, with the hope of reducing 
by some hours the distance between those two points. 
And we were to be its first passengers, going as 
far as Calamar, and there transferring to the first 
down-river boat. 

The sea-sled was most alluring to look at. Its 
white paint glistened, spotless and new, in the early 
sun. Its wicker arm-chairs invited. Its curious 
shape, a thirty-five-foot motor-launch on runners, 
promised a thrill. And its name was Paz. 

‘‘Meester’’ and I were fascinated at the idea of 
traveling on so modern a craft through the Dique, 
famous as a waterway in the days of Philip II of 


Spain. 


Ps obedience to instructions we and our posses- 


163 


164 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


This Dique is a natural channel connecting the 
Magdalena River with the sea a few miles beyond 
Cartagena. And the Magdalena has been from the — 
beginning the great artery of transportation in Co- 
lombia. When Cartagena was the Queen of the 
Indies and Spain was spending great sums in its 
fortification, the Dique had been dredged and kept 
open for traffic. But with the gradual shifting of 
commerce from Cartagena to Barranquilla the old 
waterway was neglected until its channel became so 
choked with the silt of the Magdalena that it is no 
longer adequate for boats of any but the most 
modest tonnage. 

And now we were to follow this old Dique in 
the speediest of twentieth-century motor-boats, and 
we were to make the ninety-six miles between Carta- 
gena and Calamar in three and a half hours! 

Of course we were in luck. But when would we © 
start? 

The two young Colombians who were financially 
involved in this enterprise of sea-sled service on the 
upper river soon appeared, also with a discouraging 
amount of luggage. And with them came one more 
passenger, a North American, owner of one of the 
great ranches of the lower river. After much ad- 
justment and much animated argument on the part 
of our various porters, our possessions were at last 


BY SEA-SLED 165 


stowed away in the stern, and we were ready. The 
mounting sun beat down upon the shadeless dock. 
When would we leave? 

Oh, the Jamaican engineer had been visited by 
the bright idea of changing the wiring of the electric 
starter. It was useless to question him, for he 
announced irritably that he was extremely nervous 
and must be let alone. 

The occasion demanded patience; and did not the 
very name of the sea-sled counsel peace? And 
while we were practising both those admirable vir- 
tues, the engineer slipped away. He had left every- 
thing and gone calmly home to breakfast! 

We ate mamones, the least substantial of fruits, 
and exercised our virtues. 

When at last we actually did leave, it was nine 
by the clock in the tower on the wall, but in the 
dash and verve of our departure we were repaid 
for the tedium of waiting three unnecessary hours 
on a sun-baked dock. 

The speed of the powerful engines lifted the boat 
until she glided over the water on her two long 
runners; and as she glided she threw up in her 
wake a ten-foot fountain of foaming spray. And a 
shout of good luck and farewell went up from the 
assembled crowd as we sped off down the bay. 

We settled back in the wicker chairs with the 


166 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


sense of having become part of an experiment; one 
of Colombia’s many experiments in the solving of 
that vast and baffling problem of transportation 
which in all the Andean countries is in slow process 
of solution. 

With the sea-sled Colombia would attempt to mas- 
ter the rapid current of the upper Magdalena. Thus 
the interest of participating in such an experiment 
was added to the exhilaration of coasting’ over 
the glassy harbor, our runners touching the surface 
so lightly that it would not have been surprising 
had they left it altogether. 

When we passed from the oily smooth bay out 
into the open wave-roughened Caribbean, the water 
changed from blue to green, and when we entered 
the caiio leading to the great marshy lake which the 
Colombians call a ciénaga, it became coppery brown, 
and once more tranquil; so that we skimmed again 
smoothly, gliding between banks of the intense green 
of the tropics, hurrying along at the rate of thirty 
miles an hour, creating as we hurried, our own 
joyful breeze. 

Suddenly a fish some twelve inches long rose 
from the sunlit copper surface; a fish of the bril- 
liant glistening blue of the watchful kingfishers 
which perched on overhanging branches. This 
gorgeous fish it seemed would race with the sea-sled 


BY SEA-SLED 167 


Paz. Very well, the Paz accepted the challenge. At 
top speed it rushed over the water, with amber 
spray flying high in its wake. 

For nearly two hundred feet it thus raced with a 
spangled blue fish. At intervals the fish touched 
the water, became recharged with momentum, and 
rose to fly low. And always the fish gained upon 
the sea-sled, until finally, some distance ahead of 
us, it darted below the surface and did not reappear; 
as though, its point proved, it did not need to rise 
again. 

As we rushed along, throwing up that high cas- 
.cade of spray, the little thatched villages of the 
cano cried out first in excitement and wonder and 
then in alarm, as the waves of our wake washed 
away the banks and upset or filled the canoes moored 
there. Such was the devastation of our mad progress 
through the cafio that we convinced the nervous en- 
gineer that we absolutely must slow down in passing 
villages. 

When we entered the great marshy ciénaga we 
slackened our pace on our own account, for it was 
necessary to locate the entrance to the Dique, a 
difficult matter in a great vague marsh with scores 
of bays and arms and inlets which promised any- 
thing and led to nothing; a marsh where masses of 
water-hyacinth floated like blue flowering islets. 


168 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


We tried first one opening and then another, but 
all were disappointingly not the entrance to the 
Dique. It became more and more difficult to avoid 
the patches of hyacinth, until at last we were plow- 
ing our slow way through dense clogging masses 
of them. And still our pilot insisted that we had 
only to go on a little farther in order to reach the 
open channel of the Dique. So we continued to 
chug through hyacinths, until we could no longer 
force our way forward. Ahead was a solid floating 
meadow; behind us the discouraging masses through 
which the panting engines had fought a passage. 
The Colombian owners began to pole back toward 
open water; poling painfully against the choking 
mass, poling with a furious sun beating down upon 
their exertion. 

At that disheartening moment a native canoe shot 
out from one of the inlets, pausing to regard with 
surprise our struggle. Yes, the canoe would wait; 
it would guide us to the entrance. 

At last in the Dique we proceeded along a well- 
defined waterway between intimate green banks 
which formed the horizon of a world of birds; 
squawking crested screamers, snake-birds, huge 
white herons, giant blue kingfishers, lesser herons 
and pygmy kingfishers, lapwings and grackles; black 
and white marsh flycatchers, and exquisite jacanas 


BY SEA-SLED 169 


with fluttering yellow wings; miles of them, all with 
an air of having put on their most gala raiment and 
their most festive mood, to come to the Dique that 
they might watch the passing of a sea-sled. 

But all was not well with the sea-sled. That 
experience in the ciénaga had been something alto- 
gether outside the reckoning of the manufacturers 
of sea-sleds, who had not designed the propellers 
to digest water-hyacinths. The clutch of one of the 
two engines was slipping; and when it slipped there 
was a horrid grinding noise, while at the same time 
the boat was forced suddenly to the right. The en- 
gineer would then quickly throw out the other clutch 
in an attempt to restore the boat’s equilibrium. We 
thus progressed by a series of intoxicated lurches; 
we were no longer in the running with gorgeous 
blue flying fish which know no ‘‘engine-trouble.”’ 

With each ghastly grinding the Colombians had 
a look of anguish, for they had twenty-eight thou- 
sand dollars at stake in that sea-sled, whose engines 
appeared to be in mortal agony. 

It soon became evident that we could go no farther 
without tightening the slipping clutch, and we tied 
up for repairs at the wharf of the great sugar plan- 
tation of Sincerin. 

There, in the breathless heat of noon, we drank 
iced tea from thermos bottles and partook of sar- 


170 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


dines and crackers, bananas and cakes of sweet 
chocolate, which we had not really expected to use, 
since we were to have lunched in Calamar. 

After lunch ‘‘meester’’ took some pictures while 
the rancher and I explored. 

There was only the wharf, one hut of thatch, and 
a single line of rails leading into the sugar planta- 
tion a mile away. It would have been interesting 
to visit this plantation, for it is the largest in the 
republic. But at any moment the sled might be 
ready to start, and no one dared inquire of the high- 
strung engineer whether there was time for an ex- 
cursion. 

And since there was nothing further to explore 
we sought the shade of a gourd-tree where we stood 
flicking at mosquitos with our handkerchiefs, until, 
inferring by methods of deduction that work on 
the clutch had ceased and that all hands were en- 
gaged in a united and repeated effort to start the 
engine, we returned to our places in the once proud 
wicker chairs. Then when it seemed certain that 
the boat would never move again, we were suddenly 
off, breathing once more deeply of the reviving 
breeze of our own manufacture. 

Again we stopped; and again there was that hot 
sound of hammering; and again it was silently 
agreed not to question the temperamental engineer. 


BY SEA-SLED 171 


Once more we started, and once more the sweet 
breeze blew away the heat. We followed the lovely 
winding way of the Dique as far as Sopla Viento. 
‘<The rudder must be repaired,’’ condescended the 
engineer before he became dumb under the protec- 
tion of another orgy of hammering. 

The inhabitants of the village gathered on the 
bank, assorted mulattoes of assorted ages, male and 
female according to creation. The air was hot and 
motionless, in spite of the fact that sopla means 
blow and viento means wind. ‘‘Meester’’ investi- 
gated the hammering and reported that the handle 
of a frying-pan was being added to the rudder-gear, 
which he found to have been made of the flimsiest 
soft pine. 

Certainly the trials of the pioneer are great. He 
is the victim of countless unforeseen difficulties; 
of climate, of negligence and of stupidity; through 
all of which he must preserve his vision and his 
courage. 

This experience on the sea-sled was but a small, 
a very small concrete example of the sort of thing 
that happens in the development of a new country. 
But it showed the Colombian in the character of 
pioneer, a phase of the South American which I 
have never seen described. 

Throughout that day, which must have been so 


172 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


anxious for the owners, our admiration for them 
had mounted with the thermometer. For they were 
resourceful; energetic; patient; solicitous always 
for the comfort of us, their passengers; and, might- 
lest of all victories, refraining from saying all that 
might with justice have been said; saying just 
enough to prove themselves human, but not one 
word more. 

After an hour of hammering, during which the 
population of comatose Sopla Viento lost interest 
and drifted away, we once more set forth, destined 
for Calamar. The hour was half-past five; we were 
to have reached Calamar at half-past nine. 

The hosts of birds which had disappeared during 
the heated hours now came back; noisy screamers, 
fluttering jacanas, statuesque herons, swooping king- 
fishers; all in a preoccupied mood, as though there 
were much to be accomplished before nightfall. 

And night fell swiftly. The banana-groves, the 
giant rushes, and the mango-trees, dripping with 
fruit, lost color and detail, becoming dark indistinct 
masses past which we sped; for once more we were 
actually speeding; not quite the reckless boat which 
in the morning had skimmed over the blue sheen 
of Cartagena’s bay and out into the green sea; but 
a motor-boat, still sufficiently swift to create a sensa- 
tion as it passed. 


BY SEA-SLED 173 


In this more populous part of the Dique there 
was much traffic in canoes, propelled by paddles 
shaped like the broad leaves of the water-lilies 
which grew all about us; canoes loaded with wood, 
with charcoal, with gourds, mangos, and bananas. 
Occasionally the flames of supper fires flared in the 
canoes and were reflected on the dark mirror of 
the water. 

Always we were followed by excited cries as our 
wake tossed and threatened to swamp these tiny 
primitive craft. 

We were passing frequent thatched settlements 
whose population ran down to the banks with 
torches held high to see what this was which rushed 
in the darkness through the Dique. 

Turkish fashion we sat in the bow while belated 
birds dashed by; and a crescent moon rose, that 
moon which the night before we had watched from 
the ancient wall of Cartagena, while a child’s voice 
trilled, ‘‘La luna.’’ Ahead in the abyss of the night 
there was constant far-off lightning, flashing like 
some vast elemental code; thin forked hghtning on 
the left. answered by zigzag lightning on the right; 
strange answering lightning with brief pauses be- 
tween flashes as though the reply were carefully 
considered; cloud answering cloud. 

With the shutting down of night our speed had 


174 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


been necessarily abated, for lightning and fireflies 
and high silver crescent did not do much to illumine 
the dark way of the Dique. 

In this dim quiet night it was startling to come 
upon a big electric-lit dredge and to realize that 
here again was the new; the insistent prophecy of 
the future, of change everywhere imminent. 

A contract had just been let by the Colombian 
Government to a North American firm to dredge 
and keep open the Dique. And Cartagena was pre- 
dicting that with the clearing of the channel much 
of the Magdalena River tonnage would be diverted 
from Barranquilla to Cartagena; while Barranquilla 
retorted with plans to dredge the bar across the 
mouth of the Magdalena, so that ships might dock | 
at the city itself, instead of at Puerto Colombia, and 
thus avoid the costly and tedious transfer from ship 
to railroad. | 

Passing the great flaring dredge of new enter- 
prise, we went on again in the firefly-lit dark, with 
ahead lightning answering lightning. 

And then we came suddenly and dramatically into 
the Magdalena. It stretched broad and dark and 
wide, across to its opposite bank, and from its swift 
glimmering current rose the clustered lights of a 
river-boat whose glow was reflected in soft luminous 
blur. 


BY SEA-SLED 175 


‘‘Calamar! See there on your right is Calamar!’’ 
cried the sea-sled owners. ‘‘Calamar at last!”’ 

It was just twelve hours since we had sailed with 
- triumphant shower of spray from the dock of Carta- 
gena, scheduled to reach Calamar in three hours 
and a half. 

‘‘Calamar!’’ We rose stiffly from our cross- 
legged dream in the bow. Then our part in the sea- 
sled experiment was over. 

And there were the shouts of porters getting our 
luggage from the boat to the shore, and our own 
farewells. 

**Good-by.’’ | 

‘We'll see you later ... on the upper river!’’ 

‘‘Good-by.’’ 


CHAPTER XI 
THE BACK WAY TO SANTA MARTA 


OST travelers approach Santa Marta by its 
M front door, sailing into its vivid little bay 
and docking at the imposing wharf of the Fruit Com- 
pany ; for few know of the existence of the delightful 
back way, through the cafos and marshes of the 
Magdalena delta. 

To follow this back way the point of departure 
is Barranquilla. Indeed, for the traveler Barran- 
quilla exists solely as a place from which he pro- 
ceeds somewhere else. 

It was in Barranquilla, therefore, that we waited, 
having come down from Calamar by river-boat. We 
waited because we refused to go through the delta 
at night, for where would be the advantage of the 
devious back way unless we traversed it by day. 
And as day boats were infrequent, we waited. 

Meanwhile we saw Barranquilla as something 
more than a starting-point. We assimilated the fact 
that it is the principal port on the Magdalena River 
and that, although it is seventeen miles by rail from 


the seaport at Puerto Colombia, yet half the foreign 
176 


THE BACK WAY TO SANTA MARTA 177 


commerce of the country passes through it. We 
found it a stirring ambitious place, with factories 
for the making of bricks and soap, candles and 
shoes, matches and chocolate, and with important 
textile mills and tanneries. 

We motored with friends along the wide asphalt 
boulevard of a new residential district where hand- 
some villas are springing up, the whole development 
admirably planned and constructed under the direc- 
tion of a North American who has lived long in 
Colombia. We inspected a new hospital in process 
of building and rejoiced with our Barranquilla 
friends over the site of a prospective golf-course. 

We visited the business quarter of the city and 
acquired much information, that most of the for- 
eigners in trade in Colombia are Syrians, with small 
British, German, Italian, and North American 
groups in the larger towns. We learned that so 
many tramps drift down to the north coast of Co- 
lombia that permanent signs are displayed in the 
Barranquilla banks announcing that andarimes are 
not received. And what in the world are andarines? 
Tramps, of course, for does not the verb andar mean 
to walk? 

Thus instructively was our time spent in Barran- 
quilla. But looking back I find myself ignoring 
tanneries and factories, and remembering the dust, 


178 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


and the Pensién Inglesa, and the coming of the rain. 
It was August, and it had not rained in Barranquilla 
since October. ‘‘It really should be raining a little 
now,’’ we were told. ‘‘But often it does not rain 
from one October to another.”’ 

‘¢ And can you always be sure of October?”’ 

‘‘Oh, yes, it really rains then; why, horses have 
been known to drown in the streets.”’ 

But at the time of our visit it had not rained for 
almost a year, and in the city the dust was inches 
deep; thick dust as smooth and fine as flour. The 
high two-horse surreys and the motors stirred it up 
in choking clouds, and the ambling little donkeys 
kicked up suffocating quantities. Hven at the Pen- 
sidn Inglesa, on the slope back of the town, there 
was dust. 

The Pensién stands in a garden well back from 
the street; and dust lies thick on the red and yellow 
cannas of the garden; it veils the variegated crotons, — 
dims the purple glory of the bougainvillea, and ages 
the palms. It powders the horses of the surreys 
which trot up the driveway of the Pensién, until 
they all become gray horses with gray manes. That 
horse of rumor which was thus dust-choked for 
eleven months of the year, only to be drowned in 
the streets on the twelfth month, must indeed have 
died a pessimist’s death. 


THE BACK WAY TO SANTA MARTA 179 


But the Pension which stands in the thirsty gar- 
den is a place of comfort and of peace. Its open 
structure adapts it so perfectly to the tropics that 
it is difficult to believe in the heat of Barranquilla. 
The suites of rooms open straight through from 
sunrise to sunset; for the front balcony, upon which 
the bedrooms give, faces east, while the baths and 
little breakfast-rooms look over fragrant white- 
flowering trees to the west. 

If there was even a whisper of a breeze, it was 
ours, and the bare simplicity of the place was so 
clean and quiet that of course we were right in 
thinking it cool. Yet at noon, as we sat in the 
veranda dining-room, the light was hot and white 
on the tennis-courts outside. In its intensity it so 
suggested India that I half expected the shrill mo- 
notony of the brain-fever bird to break the stillness. 
Such is my memory of the oasis of the Pension, 
created by an Englishwoman as a haven for the 
wayfarer. 

There was thus the Pension and the dust, and 
then there was the coming of the rain. 

It came upon the morning of our departure. There 
was thunder and lightning and a black menacing 
sky as we drove through dust to the little steamboat 
Cortissoe. But no one believed in the rain, all 
affecting to scorn the threatening symptoms. The 


180 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


friends who came to see us off shrugged their shoul- 
ders. It sometimes behaved like this, they said, 
but with no result beyond a few reluctant drops: 
although it might be raining heavily twenty miles 
inland, Barranquilla would be disappointed by just 
such false promises. 

Our fellow-passengers were equally skeptical, 
having provided themselves with no sort of pro- 
tection against possible rain. To them the journey 
was an occasion, in honor of which they wore organ- 
dies and silks, with bands of ribbon in their hair, 
great strings of imitation pearls around their necks, 
and tortoise-shell bracelets on their brown arms. 

And then the drops began to fall; great isolated 
drops falling in a grudging half-hearted way. It 
would of course, they all said, be over in a moment, 
since it was not yet October. But when the Cor- 
tissoz left the dock and started down the channel of 
the caiio which leads into the river, the drops fell. 
fast, hurrying drops close together. The pinks and 
yellows and blues then moved back from the rail. 
Soon there were no longer distinguishable drops, 
but rain coming down in broad clear sheets, with 
all the finery huddled in the narrow passage be- 
tween the half-dozen cabins. 

We put on waterproof coats that we might re- 
main on deck while the boat inched its way down the 


THE BACK WAY TO SANTA MARTA 181 


crowded cano, which swarmed with steamboats and 
barges, rafts and launches and canoes. 

And as we passed we saw Barranquilla greet the 
rain. Children ran along the bank shouting with 
glee, and in the recklessness of his joy a man drove 
his horse and his carriage and himself into the 
cano, that all might bathe together. <A calico-frocked 
woman sat by the water’s edge and loosened her 
long black hair, rejoicing in the downpour which 
drenched her. Men poling the heavy freight-barges 
had taken off the shirt and trousers which make 
up the sum of their clothing, and had become bronze 
nudes poling in the cool rain. It was as though 
with the coming of that fresh sweet rain, a hidden 
tension had been suddenly released. 

When we passed out of the cafio and into the river 
a torrent had been falling for forty minutes with- 
out sign of abatement; forty minutes of heavenly 
rain falling on that parched and dusty town. How 
clean and bright it must have washed the dust- 
dimmed garden of the Pension, bringing to life the 
reds and yellows, purples and greens! 

Still in the rain we crossed the broad Magdalena, 
over to the tiny mouth of that channel which is 
the back way to Santa Marta, entering the flat delta 
country and winding through a watery labyrinth of 
canvos and of enormous marshes. 


182 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Groves of cocoanut-palms, bent in the direction 
of the prevailing trade-winds, were reflected in great 
pools of rain-water, and beyond were the sand-dunes 
which separated us from the sea. We passed from 
cano to swampy lake and back again to canto; to a 
cavio so narrow that there was barely room to ad- 
mit us. 

The rain had ceased, and between walls of vine- 
draped trees we were advancing toward a cloudless 
sky. 

The country was altogether different from that 
along the Dique, where, save for the mango-trees 
of the villages, the vegetation of the banks did not 
rise too high to shut out the vista of level plains 
stretching away to low rolling hills; while in the 
cano of the delta we passed between the festooned 
walls of tropical jungle, thickly massed foliage, 
deeply intensely green, with at long intervals tiny 
clearings, which as a rule contained but a soli- 
tary hut, although in one case the jungle had been 
driven back far enough to make room for a village 
of four. 

These huts are as primitive as possible. One 
needs only the will for a hut and the stout machete 
which is at once the weapon and the tool of all 
dwellers in the South American forest; the jungle 
furnishing bamboo uprights and the palm thatch. 


THE BACK WAY TO SANTA MARTA 183 


Of course, if one is ambitious, bamboo walls may 
be added, but walls are after all a luxury. 

Furnishing is equally simple; bamboo platforms 
raised a few feet from the earthen floor serve as 
beds, tables, or chairs; several clay water-jars and 
cooking-pots stand about, and from the rafters hang 
strips of meat, bunches of bananas, perhaps even 
a hammock, and rarely some spare garment. 

The huts are built so close to the water that 
from a distance they seem to float. About many 
of them the owners construct bamboo stockades 
whose object is to discourage visitors in the person 
of alligators, with which the cao swarms. 

And through this cafvio we moved so slowly that 
nothing seemed startled. The naked children of 
the huts merely stared curiously. There was no 
break in the little monotonous frog-piping. Birds 
fluttered from one branch to another, sometimes 
flying along with us from tree to tree; and so close 
were the banks that we had to dodge the branches, 
remembering the unfortunate man who on the night- 
boat had put his head out of a cabin window and 
been killed by a blow from one of these very 
branches. 

The cao twists and turns between its fragrant 
garlanded walls; with always the surprise of what 
may lie beyond the turns. Perhaps there will be a 


184 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


lake whose surface is spread with water-lilies; and 
where there are water-lilies there will also be jacanas 
walking about on the floating leaves and unfurling 
and furling their lemon wings as though they were 
tiny coquettish fans. Or perhaps there will be a 
solitary fisherman as still as bronze in his canoe; 
or some singularly enchanting wall of flowering 
vine-clad tree repeating itself on the limpid surface 
of the cavio. But whatever the surprise beyond the 
turn, there is always unspoiled beauty. 

Not even the banana industry of the district about 
Santa Marta has touched the primitive life of the 
cano, although it is because of the prosperity brought 
by bananas that little boats chug back and forth 
between Barranquilla and Ciénaga, which is the 
headquarters for many of the banana workers. It 
is bananas which are responsible for the silks and 
pearls of our passengers; and bananas have built 
the ninety-seven miles of railroad which tap the 
plantations, and with which we were planning to 
connect at Ciénaga on the opposite shore of the 
great lake into which our charming cafio was lead- 
ing us. | 

The bananas were even responsible for our own 
presence on the Cortissoz, since it was in order to 
visit one of the plantations that we were journeying 
to Santa Marta. 


THE BACK WAY TO SANTA MARTA = 185 


In the afternoon of that lovely day we left the 
cano and entered the last and largest of the ciénaga 
lakes; and as we steamed quietly across its peaceful 
desertion we were headed toward the Santa Marta 
range whose peaks showed through foamy cloud. 
The breeze was freshly cool. One of the crew 
played on a harmonica, played monotonously over 
and over the same scrap of a tune, when all at once 
there was an explosion, and our gentle progress 
across the glassy lake came to an end, as did the 
little tune on the harmonica. 

Below there was excited talk: a piston-rod had 
snapped and blown off the head of a cast-iron cylin- 
der. The anchor-chain rattled over the side of the 
boat, to settle quietly at the bottom of the lake. 

We waited then for repairs, while all about us 
fish leaped from the placid surface, leaping four 
feet into the air and falling at once like streaks 
of silver, back into the lake. We waited, and sunset 
dyed pink the little clouds in the lap of the Sierra, 
from whose snowy crests the mists slowly cleared. 
But the sunset had passed, and the last train for 
Santa Marta had departed before we pulled up 
anchor and were creeping along on one cylinder 
toward the deep purple of the mountains. 

It was night, and the girls in pink and blue and 
yellow lit cigarettes. A mother had undressed a 


186 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


microscopic six-months-old baby, replacing its blue 
organdie over a black slip, with a wee white night- 
dress; and in the shelter of the passageway she 
was gently rocking it to sleep. 

It is in these our fellow-passengers that the whole 
point of the piston-rod adventure lies. ‘There were 
eight children on that passenger list, and they must 
have been dropping with fatigue; for we had left 
Barranquilla in the early morning. But not one 
of the eight uttered a word of complaint. Every 
one on board was as amiable as though breaking 
a piston-rod and hobbling in hours late were an 
agreeable part of the program. 

Since the cabins of the Cortissozg were insufferably 
stuffy we decided to set up our cots on deck; for 
although conversation seemed too incessant for 
sleep, it would be pleasant to rest looking up at the 
stars. 

The night-boat for Barranquilla advanced ablaze 
with light. We blew two deafening signals and were 
answered. She threw a rope and drew up to our 
starboard to discuss the disaster and then left us 
to crawl on to Ciénaga. 

A fleet of canoes each with its lantern passed 
on their way to fish; and then in spite of the buzz 
of talk we fell into a brief sleep, to be waked sud- 
denly by the hubbub of arriving at Ciénaga. Auto- 


THE BACK WAY TO SANTA MARTA = 187 


mobiles had come to meet the elegance of ribboned 
hair and silks, and horns added themselves to talk. 
There was the confusion of unloading, after which a 
tireless crew devoted some hours to pounding at the 
engine and to a discussion of each blow. 

Another space of sleep followed the cessation of 
their industry, but, while it was yet dark, before 
even the crowing of roosters or the clang of church 
bells, there came suddenly the sound of many people 
all talking at once, quite close to us, almost in our 
ears. 

At last in the vague dawn we discovered that 
the wharf to which we were tied was also the public 
market. The canoes which we had seen go out had 
returned full of fish, while, from the surrounding 
country, loads of oranges and pineapples, bananas 
and gourds, meat and vegetables, all had been as- 
sembled. We had waked in a South American mar- 
ket! ‘‘Meester’’ had only to step on shore to 
purchase fruit for breakfast, while I made coffee 
with mineral water and brewed it over an alcohol 
lamp. The hot gold sun came up from behind the 
Sierra, but before it had begun to heat the day we 
had caught the first train and were on our way 
through cactus and mesquite country, twenty-two 
miles down by the back way to the little town of 
Santa Marta. 


CHAPTER XII 


SANTA MARTA 


N Santa Marta nothing is far from anything else. 
I There is of course a plaza, and equally of course 
a great church faces the plaza, a church with two 
dome-like towers, white and pale blue, within 
which hang green bells. 

The plaza is but two blocks from the Hotel 
Francés; not more than three minutes’ walk to the 
foot of the street is the bay; two minutes in another 
direction is a diminutive park with palms, a silent 
fountain, and, diagonally opposite, the two-story 
office-building of the Fruit Company, its many win- 
dows shaded by white awnings. The brief streets 
leading from these centers make up all there is of 
Santa Marta. 

Just beyond the limit of streets there is in one 
direction the great wireless station of the Fruit 
Company and in another the mosquito-netted bunga- 
lows of the Company officials, standing among flow- 
ers and palms and tennis-courts like a transplanted 


fragment of the Canal Zone. And this is all there 
188 


SANTA MARTA 189 


is of the suburbs. Santa Marta is thus tiny and 
intimate. 

The bay like the town is in miniature, although 
sufficiently deep to give anchorage to large ships. 
Arid hills inclose it, so sparsely covered with 
parched scrub and cactus growing at wide intervals 
out of dry soil that they seem more barren than 
if they were entirely bare. And the bay is intensely 
blue and the hills hard in the sharpness of their 
outline. There is no perspective; houses and palms 
and hills might have been cut out of cardboard 
and set up around a bay colored from that little 
rectangle in the paint-box which is labeled indigo. 
And if there be a ship in the harbor, that, too, will 
be of cardboard. For sharp outline and color domi- 
nate, rather than depth and detail. 

And the whole stands forth distinct and unwav- 
ering in brilliant desert light, for Santa Marta 
never shimmers as does Cartagena, nor is it dust- 
blurred, like Barranquilla. It might be an Arab 
village on the edge of the desert, overlooking the 
Mediterranean. The window-barred houses which 
are part of the Moorish legacy to Spain emphasize 
the resemblance, while the domed church might pass 
for a mosque; and only the bungalows of the Fruit 
Company, with the publicity of their verandas, are 
out of the picture. 


190 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


The Hotel Francés of Santa Marta is in scale with 
the town and the bay, for it has only four bedrooms, 
although its dining-room can seat perhaps twenty- 
five. 

In that hotel I realized my wish to live in a rose- 
colored house with a window-grating on the street, 
with large doors which date from colonial days, and 
with wooden shutters of the proper shade of faded 
turquoise. 

At night I would amuse myself by sitting as the 
women who belong to rose-colored houses sit, on the 
stone window-seat behind the bars, looking out into 
the street, while people pass along the narrow ledge 
of sidewalk. And Santa Marta holds the record 
for the narrowness of these ledges, which are often 
only twelve inches wide, seldom more than eighteen 
inches, and raised at least a foot from the street 
level; a precaution indicative of what happens when 
it rains. The ledges being thus narrow, people pass 
very close to where I sit in the dark following the 
Santa Marta fashion. When a man speaks to his 
companion, it seems as though the remark were in- 
tended for my particular ear; or if he pauses to 
light a cigarette I will actually feel the warmth 
of the flaring match, or catch a whiff of the smoke 
before he goes on. 

As I sit there in the dark I begin to realize that 


SANTA MARTA 191 


after all love-making through the window-bars of a 
Spanish-American house offers no end of alluring 
possibilities. 

On the opposite wall I discover a fantastic shadow 
pantomime. Two little naked boys pass, becoming 
in shadow grotesquely the size of men; men moving 
with child-grace, gleefully skipping, stopping to 
wonder, striking attitudes of boxing, gleefully skip- 
ping; shifting from one fleeting mood to another as 
they pass from sight. 

There are often long pauses when the street be- 
comes so quiet that those who sit in the window have 
nothing to do but to gaze up at the star-powdered 
sky, divided by the window-bars into long narrow 
rectangles; while across the way on an upper bal- 
cony a rocker sways everlastingly back and forth. 

And if I rise with the rooster of the patio, for 
we have our own private hotel rooster and can no 
longer throw stones on the subject; if I rise then, 
and sit in the window, I may see the charcoal-boy. 
He will pass under the window with his sweet tremu- 
lous reiteration of ‘‘Carbén... carbon... carbon!”’ 
And he will come cross-legged upon a donkey, 
perched between two wooden racks which hold the 
sacks of charcoal. He will come crying ‘‘Carbén’’ 
up and down the streets until in the distance his cry 
becomes as wild and sad as was once the song of 


192 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


old negroes who, remembering slavery, sang far off 
in the corn-fields. 

What is there, I wonder, so infinitely sad about 
selling charcoal in the very early morning? 


Through the porters we made the discovery that 
it is not customary to do more than remain over- 
night at the hotel. 

After having several times rescued our luggage 
from the hands of those well-meaning porters who 
took it for granted that we must be leaving by every 
outgoing boat, it gradually dawned upon us that 
they found it incredible that any one should remain 
so long in Santa Marta. People who came over 
from Barranquilla to catch the Fruit boat they could 
understand, and of course there were occasional 
traveling salesmen; but such birds of passage put 
up at the hotel for only a night or two. They did not 
even remain long enough to write their laundry- 
lists on the walls of their rooms, as they do in Carta- 
gena, where from the walls one may learn both the 
Spanish and the English for the masculine apparel 
of the tropics. 

Thus it was puzzling to porters to have us stay 
on at the Francés without comprehensible excuse, 
simply drifting with the days while Santa Marta 


SANTA MARTA 193 


revealed itself, gradually, much as a human char- 
acter little by little admits one to intimacy. 

Among our discoveries was a certain Soderia 
Continental where cocoanuts were kept on ice. 
After having an opening cut and two straws in- 
serted into our cocoanuts, we would then take them 
into the park, to enjoy their delicious iced milk 
under the thick shade of an almond-tree. 

It was through this habit of frequenting the park 
that we happened one day to see the banana loaders 
as they were paid off by the Fruit Company. 

Many had come. in their own automobiles, for 
why does one earn money if not to spend it? And 
when a one-roomed adobe house rents for five dol- 
lars a month; when a hundred bananas may be 
had for five cents, and often for nothing; when meat 
is only six cents a pound and clothes a negligible 
factor, why shouldn’t one drive up in one’s own 
car to collect one’s pay? Are there not always two 
banana ships to be loaded each week? And a union 
to regulate wages so that one may count on an 
income of fifteen dollars a ship. And there is no 
bugbear of saving. No one saves, for there is 
always some relative who may be appealed to in 
life’s emergencies. Even religion is not taken so 
seriously in Santa Marta as in the interior towns. 


194 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


The church provides any number of delightful fes- 
tivities, and religion becomes a thing to be enjoyed, 
as are life and pay-day and automobiles. 

But it is not quite so idyllic as appears upon the 
surface; for there is rum, and the women of these 
men stand waiting that they may secure the neces- 
sary household expenses before all is squandered. 

These women who wait while the men file by 
the paymaster have passed from the primitive state 
where the fruit of toil, rather than money, is the 
currency; they have entered that phase of civiliza- 
tion where man’s economic value is recognized, 
while woman must wheedle for her payment; until 
from being a self-respecting entity she has been 
forced to become a creature of wiles. 


But outside the town between the bay and the 
wireless station there is a cocoanut-grove where 
life in a hut under the trees seems as simple as 
though there were no such beast as the double- 
headed monster of industrialism with its face of 
bounty and of tyranny. 

When the wind is from the sea this cocoanut- 
grove is a delightful place to spend an afternoon. 
The breeze has then the fragrance of a cool ripe 
watermelon which has just been opened; there is 
the rhythmic rush and ebb of little waves on a 


SANTA MARTA 195 


yellow curve of beach; the high heads of the palms 
rustle, and out in the bay pelicans are fishing. 

There, under the cocoanuts, out of hearing of 
the roaring dynamos of the wireless, it is possible 
to feel the faint vibration of that undercurrent of 
primitive emotions which still flows, although in the 
presence of progress it has sunk to the hidden 
depths of the stream. 

The inhabitants of the cocoanut-grove would, for 
example, know about the Secretos, the Secret Ones, 
who treat the diseases of men and of animals by 
a mysterious prayer about which the natives are 
persistently reticent. 

It was from a man who has lived sympathetically 
and long in Santa Marta that I learned of the exist- 
ence of the Secretos, and I have never found them 
mentioned in any written account of the place. This 
man could tell me nothing of the nature of the 
prayer, but he knew that the Secret Ones were 
often summoned in case of illness, especially of 
snake-bite; and that if for any reason they could 
not come in person, the Secret One’s sandal was 
sent to the sufferer as a material manifestation of 
his treatment by prayer. 


In Cartagena the legends and the facts of the 
past are so tangible that they actually compete with 


196 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


the present, but although Santa Marta is some years 
older than Cartagena, it is so dominated by its 
cosmopolitan present that the past is elusive. There 
are no ancient walls and tunneled forts to recall it. 
Like the soul, it must be invited. 

The great banana district has already trans- 
formed Santa Marta into a place where, as in New 
York, one is more aware of the foreigner than of 
the native. There is, of course, the hospitable col- 
ony of the Fruit Company with their bungalows and 
their tennis-courts. There are the Company’s ships 
putting into Santa Marta twice a week for bananas, 
and sometimes bringing a few tourists. The ships 
are commanded by British and North American 
captains; the crews represent all nations. And 
there are the banana loaders, lured by the new 
industry from the West Indies, from the island of 
Curacao, as well as from all parts of Colombia 
itself. The proprietor of the hotel is French, the 
waiter and majordomo from the interior city of Me- 
dellin, the cook from Mompox on the Magdalena, 
while the porters have come over from Barran- 
quilla. The half-dozen coachmen who drive dilapi- 
dated surreys and rickety horses about Santa Marta 
all confess complete ignorance of the place, because 
they have just come from somewhere else. 

A huge industry is blotting out the old tradition, 


SANTA MARTA 197 


and a new personality is in the making. Thus I 
found no acquaintances with whom I could recon- 
struct the conquest and all that followed it. Alone 
I must invite the past of Santa Marta. And I found 
that it was at sunset on the beach that I could most 
easily visualize what had gone before. 

For the indigo bay is the same. The desolate 
desert hills remain unchanged. The pelicans fishing 
do not differ from their ancestors of four hundred 
years ago. Sunsets flamed then, and, as now, quickly 
faded. It is September, and rain is falling on the 
massed blue of the abrupt Santa Marta Range, fall- 
ing as it fell in the September of 1536; and when 
there is rain in the mountains it is still unsafe to 
attempt the trails. 

But, though I may not mount their trails, | may 
face the flames of a sunset sky, while I invite the 
past. » 

In those mountains high above the limit of the 
coffee plantations still dwell the vanishing rem- 
nants of the Indians with whom the conqueror had 
to reckon. 

Two hundred years ago a priest, Padre de la 
Rosa, wrote of the Indians about Santa Marta; in 
writing he quoted much from a padre who had pre- 
ceded him by two hundred years; and twenty-three 
years ago Francis Nicholas, in the ‘‘American 


198 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Anthropologist,’’ quotes from those priests of cen- 
turies past. 

If Padre de la Rosa could return he would gaze 
bewildered about a changed Santa Marta; but back 
in the mountains among the Ahruacos Indians he 
would find little to alter in his chronicle of their 
customs and beliefs. 

Only in their diminished numbers do they differ 
from their forebears. Unlike the Chibcha Indians 
of the plateau, they did not amalgamate with the 
Spaniards but, like the Motilones, simply retired 
farther and farther into the inaccessibility of the 
mountains. 

There the padre would find them living in the 
little round houses with which he was familiar; little 
round houses with high conical roofs of thatch; 
little houses always in pairs, the house of the hus- 
band and the house of the wife, with between them 
the stone on which the woman sets forth her lord’s 
food ; for the one never enters the home of the other. 

And the padre would remember their belief that 
a child must never be created in darkness, since it 
would then have no ‘‘light in its eyes’? but would 
be born blind. 

He would find that his Ahruacos still ‘‘use few 
words and are peaceable’’; that their faces are as 
he described them, ‘‘humble and serene’’; that they 


SANTA MARTA 199 


dress in the same long robes of coarse cloth which 
reach to the knees and are sometimes girdled with 
ropes of Sisal hemp; that they live chiefly upon 
the vegetables they raise; and that they chew the 
cocaine of which four hundred years ago they said 
to the Spaniard, ‘‘Sir, chewing these leaves we are 
neither hungry nor tired.’’ 

And still, like Adam and Eve, their lives center 
about the secluded gardens which are the meeting- 
place of husband and wife. And every year in 
the month of December the round high-peaked houses 
and the gardens are deserted. The Ahruacos have 
shouldered the knapsacks and cooking-pots which 
compose their furniture and have disappeared, up 
across the snow and into the unexplored mountains. 
No one has ever discovered where they go or for 
what reason; it is rumored that they make a pil- 
grimage to some ancient temple hidden in those in- 
terior hills, but the nature of the ceremonies and 
the site of the temple remain as mysterious as before 
Columbus ever discovered a New World. 

Thus a people, shrunk in numbers to less than a 
thousand, perpetuate the beliefs of their fathers, 
unshaken by the new civilization which has grown 
up at the foot of their hills; a people gradually 
becoming extinct while they cling to the old ways 
and the old convictions. 


200 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


So Padre de la Rosa would find the Ahruacos 
much as he had left them; while over in the Sierra 
back of El Banco the Motilones of whom he wrote 
also still keep off the stranger with their poisoned 
arrows, and to-day little more is known of them 
than Padre de la Rosa knew, except that it is esti- 
mated that they are now reduced to five or six 
thousand. 

To the east of Santa Marta on the Goajira Penin- 
sula still live the padre’s old friends, the Goajira 
Indians, some thirty or forty thousand in number; 
warlike and prolific; voluntarily trading with the 7 
Colombians, but stoutly maintaining their independ- 
ence; Indians with cattle and horses and the pearls 
for which they dive, each man taking as many wiyes 
as he can afford, tribe carrying on vendetta-like 
feud against tribe; picturesque Indians, scantily 
clothed in red embroidered tunics with feathers in 
their hair. | 

But Indians are no longer to be seen in Santa 
Marta, so changed among the changeless desert hills 
which inclose its harbor, where at sunset the sky 
flames as four centuries ago upon the eve of 
Quesada’s departure to explore the Magdalena 
River and to conquer a kingdom of whose very 
existence even the Indians of Santa Marta were 
ignorant. : 


SANTA MARTA 201 


In the miserable cluster of adobe hovels which 
then made up the village, disillusioned Spaniards 
were dying of fever; and the governor, Don Pedro, 
argued that mutiny could be avoided only by the 
diversion of conquest; for in those days the slaughter 
of Indians and the plundering of their villages was 
an infallible remedy against rebellion. 

Therefore Don Pedro decreed that Jimenez de 
Quesada, a young lawyer of good family from the 
south of Spain, be put at the head of an expedition 
into the vast unknown interior of Colombia. Don 
Pedro had six brigantines built. These were to 
sail around to the mouth of the Magdalena and 
one hundred miles-up the river to Tamalameque, 
then the limit of Spanish exploration in Colombia. | 
There they would be joined by Quesada, his men, 
and his cavalry, who were to proceed by land from 
Santa Marta. 

It was April 6, 1536, after a solemn mass, that 
the six brigantines sailed out of the harbor, while 
Quesada with six hundred men, eighty cavalry, and 
the ass, Marobe, set forth on the arduous march to 
Tamalameque. Few of those six hundred men are 
now remembered by name, and of the eighty horses 
the names are forgotten, while the ass, Marobe, is 
immortal. And truly Marobe’s story is as romantic 
as that of the great Quesada himself; for Marobe 


202 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


was as dauntless as the most daring of the con- 
querors. Indeed the old chronicler, Fray Simén, 
declares that Marobe may ‘‘with justice be called 
a conqueror, since he was the first of his species 
to tread the soil of Colombia.’’ 

The vessel in which Marobe had set sail from 
Spain had been wrecked off the coast, and he had, 
like a true conqueror, boldly swum to the shore of 
the new land, where he appeared to the astonished 
Indians as even more supernatural than the Span- 
iards themselves. They swung this wonderful 
strange creature to a pole and carried him up over 
the mountains to their village, where he lived for 
months, treated with all the homage due supernat- 
ural beings. | 

But Marobe was not silent on his ‘‘peak in 
Darien’’; and upon one of those salutary expedi- 
tions, sent forth to dispel ennui and disheartenment, 
Don Pedro heard a sound as familiar to him as 
his own tongue. He heard the braying of Marobe. 
Marobe had always brayed and saw no reason why, 
he should give up old habits now that he was super- 
natural and a conqueror. 

Don Pedro of course investigated that unexpected 
braying, and Marobe was conducted to Santa Marta 
eventually to go exploring with Quesada. 

How illuminating would be the memoirs of 


» a, 
ee ee ee ee 


SANTA MARTA 203 


Marobe! The flora of the new country would of 
course have interested him. His diary would have 
contained notes upon the surprising inedibility of 
the great jungle which looked so promising and was 
yet so disappointing. And how painfully uncivilized 
he must have found his own kingdom, the kingdom 
of beasts; positively more heathen than the Indians 
who at least had houses, whereas the animals were 
all of them shockingly uncivilized, living in that 
inhospitable jungle! 

In all the exhausting way, through the heat of the 
Magdalena Valley, and panting up over the Andes 
into the realm of the Chibchas, Marobe, save for 
the members of his own party, saw no domestic ani- 
mals; no chickens, no cattle or sheep, no horses, no 
asses like himself; not even the strange haughty 
llamas which the Spaniards found domesticated in 
EKeuador and Peru. 

Colombia before the conquest was a lonely country 
for a civilized beast; while the trails, worn only by 
men, were execrable. On the ascents it was neces- 
sary to plant his fore feet firmly and, by a mighty 
effort, to pull his rear up to join them; on 
the descents the same trusty fore feet had to brace 
themselves while the rear of Marobe slid perilously 
down; with all the long way his ears registering the 
emotions of an explorer. 


204 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


After such participation in subduing the New 
World, Marobe’s end seems unworthy; but so prob- 
ably do all conquerors consider their ends. 

Certainly Pizarro would not have chosen to be 
assassinated by his own countrymen as he sat di- 
gesting a good Sunday dinner and enjoying the title 
of Marquis; nor would Quesada have chosen after 
his long and stirring life to die the slow death of 
leprosy. Marobe’s fate was also tragic, and he 
might well have felt some ignominy in having been 
upon a later expedition, killed and eaten, in one of 
those extremities of starvation which so often tor- 
tured the Spanish explorers. 


But regardless of their ends they were, Quesada 


and Marobe, each in his own way conquerors, for 
each had endured much, dared much, and overcome 
much, 


And the kingdom which they conquered was des- 
tined to be one of Spain’s richest colonies. The 
wretched village of Santa Marta became a town 
with rose and blue houses and a great church with 
domes. Colonists came out from Europe, estab- 
lishing sugar and coffee plantations; and the In- 
dians withdrew farther into the mountains. 

Santa Marta was important and prosperous, with 
no presentiment that dead days were to follow upon 


SE a a oe 


SANTA MARTA 205 


the building of that seventeen-mile stretch of rail- 
road connecting Barranquilla with the sea, and thus 
shifting trade with the interior from Cartagena 
and Santa Marta to Barranquilla. Cartagena suf- 
fered from that transfer of commerce, but Santa 
Marta died. Ships ceased to put into its safe, deep 
little harbor. Colonists, abandoning their houses 
and estates, returned to Europe, often never to be 
heard of again. Empty houses stood about Santa 
Marta, and any one who chose could go and live in 
them. For dead Santa Marta had no vision of the 
rich days that were to follow upon the discovery by 
a Fruit Company that thousands of its surrounding 
acres awaited only irrigation to become one of the 
best banana lands in the Americas. 


The sunset flame has passed, and with it has gone 
my reverie. It is a hot breathless night in one of 
the fat years which bananas have brought to Santa 
Marta, and we have come down to the dock to watch 
the steamship Tortuguero loaded with a cargo of 
fruit for England and Rotterdam. 

On the dock a continuous procession of men 
passes from a freight-car drawn up on one side, to 
a canvas conveyor leading from the wharf to the 
deck of the ship. A little spluttering engine runs 
the conveyor, and the men pass back and forth in 


206 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


two dizzy streams; a stream of unloaded men pour- 
ing one by one into the car; and an emerging stream 
in single file each bearing on his right shoulder a 
great green bunch of bananas; into the car empty, 
and, loaded, back to the revolving conveyor. 

Within the car men are stationed to help lift the 
bunches to the shoulders of the loaders, placing each 
bunch so that the fruit points forward. When, with 
a swift but perceptible adjustment of muscle to bur- 
den, the loader trots heavily across the dock. 

There, as he turns, two men shift the load from 
his shoulder to the constantly revolving conveyor; 
‘bunch by bunch, one after another, placed end to 
end, on the ever-moving strip of canvas; for this is 
not the type of conveyer which carries the fruit in 
horizontal pockets. 

His burden deposited, the loader becomes again 
part of the stream pouring into the car, to emerge 
bearing great green bunches; two giddy streams; 
into the car, back to the conveyor, and into the car 
again; throughout the thirty-six hours required to 
load one of the big ships whose capacity is ninety-six 
thousand bunches. 

If there is the faintest slackening of speed, the 
men at the conveyor slap the canvas or clap their 
hands; the streams are then accelerated; the men 
running, loaded and unloaded, in continual rotation. 


SANTA MARTA 207 


There is no hesitation, no confusion; no break in the 
rhythm. 

Indeed it is so difficult to cut across the lines that 
we await the momentary lull when the men sleeping 
on top of the cars rouse to shift the ‘‘empties,’’ in 
order to make room for the full cars constantly 
arriving from up the lines; bringing more and yet 
more green bunches to be placed on men’s shoul- 
ders, and conveyed on revolving canvas to a ship’s 
deck. 

When we climb to that upper deck we find that at 
the terminus of the conveyor men receive the 
bunches; turning them sideways and rolling them 
off, upon a padded mat, from which they are lifted 
over to the hatch. 

In the hatch men stand with feet wide apart above 
an opening, where on a lower level is another line 
of men, and below them a third, and in the depths 
of the ship an invisible fourth, who receive and 
place the bunches. 

The men on the upper level grasp the bunches as 
they are handed from the padded mat; grasping 
them by the thick end of the stem and reversing 
them as they swing the fruit down to the next level; 
and so from level to level. 

The men must bend low from the waist; down with 
a bunch and up to receive another; swinging down 


208 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


and up; passing from deck to deck the heavy 
bunches. 

These men do not laugh or talk or smoke, as do 
often the trotting loaders down on the dock. In 
their loose cotton trousers and undershirts they drip 
with perspiration as they bend and swing; silent 
as though such exertion in thick hot night were all 
they could endure. But from the deep hold, kept 
cool by artificial refrigeration, not for the greater 
comfort of man but to retard the ripening of fruit, 
there drifts up, through the openings down which 
bananas are passed, a song, to the measure of which 
the singers place the bunches; and as there is mo- 
notony in the careful placing of ninety-six thousand 
bunches of bananas, there is monotony in the melody 
drifting up to the deck. 

Returning to the wharf we watch again the dizzy 
lines; to the left a line and to the right a line; into 
the car empty and out again bearing great grass- 
green bunches; passing and passing and passing; 
while the engine splutters and the conveyor revolves. 

And as I watch I see them not as men, but as ants; 
an endless procession of umbrella-ants, each with its 
green leaf; industrious, praiseworthy ants, before 
whose toil I am at once reverent and rebellious. 


CHAPTER XIII 
IN THE BANANAS 


RAMPS though we are,’’ the man in the ham- 

mock was saying, ‘‘tramps though we are, and 

not supposed to understand anything about beauty, 

I’ve known many a night when we’d sit here watch- 
ing those mountains, and could n’t say a word.”’ 

The man straddled the hammock, his feet in 
riding-boots resting on the floor, and keeping the 
hammock swaying ever so slightly. He was like 
some blond Nordic giant set down in this Latin 
country; a giant in loose soft shirt, riding-trousers, 
and leather puttees over his boots. 

He had the level voice of the North American 
which, compared to all other speech, is so singularly 
without inflection. And in his arms nestled the 
tiniest of baby ocelots; a tiger-cat, they called him, 
after the South American custom, which dignifies 
both the ocelot and the jaguar with a name which 
would amuse a Bengal tiger. 

We sat on the veranda of a bungalow in the heart 
of the great banana region back of Santa Marta. 


It was the district engineer’s bungalow, but, his 
209 


210 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


wife being on a visit to her people in the States, it 
had been generously put at our disposal; not only 
the bungalow, but its fat black cook who hailed from 
Martinique, its house-boy (a native of the island of 
Granada in the British West Indies), its tiger-kitten, 
the plantations which surround it, and the view of 
the Santa Marta range from its netting-inclosed 
veranda. All were ours. 

On the veranda we looked across the flat banana 
lands to those mountains, blue and irregular, 
crowned with opal snow; an independent range 
which, without the warning of foot-hills, rises sud- 
denly, from the low-lying country east of the Mag- 
dalena River, and extends east and west along the 
Caribbean; an isolated range having no connection 
with the Andean system of eastern, western, and 
central Cordilleras which, running north and south, 
cut Colombia into longitudinal sections. 

‘‘There is no range so beautiful,’’ continued the 
man in the hammock, speaking with the deep per- 
sonal affection which mountains impose upon those 
who dwell near them. 

It was the hour when the half-dozen Anglo-Saxons 
of the banana plantations at Sevilla were accus- 
tomed to gather on the veranda, for talk, for smoke, 
for the mixing of drinks, and for play with Andy, the 
tiger-kitten. : 


IN THE BANANAS 211 


This Andy was a tiny thing, six weeks old and 
not more than eight inches long. There were white 
moons on the back of his black little ears, and black 
lines ran the length of his small eager face. He had 
big inquisitive white whiskers and a delightfully 
ferocious growl. As Désiré, the cook remarked, he 
was ‘“‘muy tigre,’’ which is another way of saying 
he was every inch a tiger. 

But for all that he was a baby with cunning tricks 
and a pathetic craving to be cuddled by the strange 
creatures who had so bewilderingly replaced his 
mother. 

Partly because of Andy and partly because it was 
a tropical veranda, talk was desultory ; snatches of 
discursive talk, somehow always more illuminating 
than any self-conscious and logical discourse. 

‘‘T wonder why they’re paying by the day to put 
up that bungalow,’’ came meditatively, punctuated 
by slow intermittent puffs at a pipe. ‘‘The only way 
to hire these follows is on contract. Otherwise... 
they go to sleep in the bananas. .. .’’ 

‘‘Oh, that? . .. One of the men has gone home 
to get married, and the bungalow ’s supposed to be 
ready for him when he gets back.’’ 

‘‘You know the company supplies us with——’”’ 

‘¢Will you look at Andy!’’ 

Andy had descended to the floor, where some one 





212 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


had playfully thrown a Panama hat over him, its 
crown completely eclipsing the tawny spotted little 
body, which was revolving invisible beneath it. 

‘‘Here, Andy! Andy!’’ as he emerged to contem- 
plate the joke with bored disdain. 

‘“‘Oh, yes ...the Company supplies us with 
bungalows and furniture. We get servants and ice 
free, too. It wouldn’t cost such a lot to live if 
whisky and cigarettes weren’t so expensive... 
forty cents a package for the cheapest foreign 
cigarettes and thirty cents for native brands.’’ 

‘‘That ’s because, next to the lottery, the chief 
government revenue is from tobacco and alcohol. 

‘“They ’re leased monopolies, you know, auctioned 
off to the highest bidder. Whatever he makes above 
the bid is his.’’ 

‘‘Naturally he’s going to boost prices all the 
traffic will bear.’’ | 

‘*Powell!’’ the man in the hammock lifted up his 
voice. ‘‘Powell! ... Bring some more cracked 
ice.’? And as he mixed, ‘‘Guess we can have another 
round if the stuff is eight dollars a bottle.’’ 

Among those employees of the Fruit Company 
there was only youth: the men who gathered on the 
bungalow veranda were all young; youth giving 
itself to the development of a huge industry. 

But, however conversation started, it came always 





IN THE BANANAS 





IN THE BANANAS 213 


back to that industry. Bananas, it seemed, were 
exacting. Some of the men had been all day riding 
the irrigation ditches. It was important to see that 
nowhere had the ditches been tampered with, for 
water was vital to the well-being of bananas. Water 
must be turned into the plantations at least once a 
month, and there was discussion concerning which 
farms were next to be flooded. 

It was explained that bananas grow best when 
their heads are hot and their feet wet. That was 
why the Santa Marta district was so ideal. There 
was comparatively little rain in the course of the 
year, with a high temperature; while rivers fed by 
the snows of the Sierra provided water for irriga- 
tion. Take typical tropical country, like Central 
America, where there was plenty of rain, there 
were also months of insufficient sun; while in regions 
of continual sunshine, there was apt to be scarcity 
of water. 

They discussed the enemies of the banana, the 
small beetle which was destroying many bunches; 
and they called the bunches ‘‘stems.’’ But the dread 
enemy was wind. It had destroyed two million stems 
the previous year, and already this year a million 
were gone. The winds come with a speed of sixty 
or seventy miles an hour, before which the plants, 
top-heavy with the weight of their bunches, are 


214 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


mowed down. An owner may go to bed a rich man 
and wake up a pauper, his whole plantation wiped 
out. 

And while we talked night descended upon the 
veranda. 

There were often long pauses, for men who live 
in lonely places lose their fear of human silence. 
Such pauses were filled by insistent frogs piping 
softly in the irrigation ditches, piping in the starless 
dark of leaf-canopied ditches. And although they 
piped primarily of life as frogs live it, they seemed 
also to pipe of the life which bananas know; miles 
of bananas out there in the darkness. .. . 

Sometimes such pauses were broken by the screech 
of a phonograph from the commissary bungalow. 

‘*They love phonographs,’’? commented the ham- 
mock, ‘‘phonographs and automobiles and player- 
pianos. That ’s how their money goes. . . . You ’ve 
been to the village?’’ 

‘*Yes’’; we knew the village; thatched, largely 
populated by dogs, and lit by candles and lanterns. 

‘‘Well, you ’d be surprised at the number of 
player-pianos and phonographs they have in those 
huts.’’ 

And I remembered little Baiios in Ecuador, a 
flower-thatched village so far from the twentieth 
century that it had never heard a phonograph, where 


IN THE BANANAS 215 


at night its people sang to their guitars, where every 
man had his song and expressed the beauty in his 
soul. JI was wondering why industrial progress 
must destroy beauty, when I was recalled to the 
banana industry. 

‘‘You ’ll be here next week when we cut for the 
American boat?”’ 

‘As soon as the ship wires Santa Marta of its 
arrival, we get our instructions to cut. The districts 
have reported how many stems they can supply, and 
a quota has been allotted each farm.’’ 

‘‘How many do we supply this time, Mac?... 
Oh, watch out there for Andy! He’s right under 
your rocker!’’ 

Andy was fond of toddling on the young uncer- 
tainty of his legs, going from chair to chair to 
solicit attention. 

‘“‘How many do we supply?...Oh, we’re 
booked for five thousand by this boat.’’ 

So the talk came always back to bananas, as 
though the acres which surrounded us took preced- 
ence over the limited human interests of those four 
little bungalows of the Fruit Company. It might 
be diverted to the tennis-game of the afternoon; to 
the gorgeous blue and yellow macaw which was the 
pride of the bachelors’ bungalow; to Andy purring 
in some one’s arms; to a pet troupial in the com- 


216 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


missary which bugled throughout the long hot days; 
to the three monkeys owned by one of the superin- 
tendents up the line, who, when life was dull, fed 
his monkeys upon rum and sweetened water, where- 
upon life was no longer dull. Although talk 
thus wandered to the small incidents of exile 
life, it always came back to bananas. 

‘Yes, all the farms begin cutting as soon as in- 
structions come in. You can’t wait with bananas. 
We deliver just as fast as the stems are cut, and 
down in Santa Marta the ships load night and day. 

‘‘You ’ve got to have special ships, too, refriger- 
ator-ships. The temperature has to be kept down to 
fifty-five degrees, or the cargo ’ll go ripe on you. 

‘*No, you can’t trifle with bananas. Why, we have 
to cut a different size according to the length of the 
voyage. We can cut a fuller fruit for the States 
than we can for Europe.’’ 

They were led on by our interest... 

‘*You see, the fruit is always cut green, and it 
keeps right on developing, drawing the sap out of 
the thick stem. That ’s why even a few degrees 
make such a difference; a chill is just as bad as too 
high a temperature. The darned thing ’s still grow- 
ing, and you must n’t check it or speed it up.’’ 

‘‘And they ’ve got to be exactly as careful at the 
other end. A boat has to be discharged as soon as 


IN THE BANANAS 217 


she docks. With bananas there ’s no time to spare. 
You ’ll find freight-cars waiting at the wharf when 
you get back to New York; freight-cars and motor- 
trucks. You ’ll see them auction off truck-loads on 
the dock. 

‘*In cold weather they put up canvas wind-shields 
to protect the fruit while it ’s being discharged; in 
the trucks they cover it with blankets; the cars are 
heated in winter and iced in summer. You can’t be 
too careful with bananas.’’ 

Thus from the first, even before I went into the 
plantations, my whole point of view had been re- 
versed, the bananas having come to be the dominant 
thing rather than ingenious man who had worked 
out the details of that amazing industry, which is | 
scarcely more than a generation old. 

Even the mountains, which rise high above any 
faint rustle of banana-leaves; those mountains 
about whose beauty the man in the hammock had 
said, ‘‘Tramps though we are ,’ even they send 
down their snows to irrigate the acres. 





The bananas live in a great green stillness. 
Grassy lanes intersect the plantations. There is an 
occasional cart-road, and that, too, is green. The 
lanes branch off at right angles from the roads, 
stretching away straight and narrow under green 


218 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


arches of banana-leaves, stretching straight and 
endless into the converging perspective of distance, 
deserted green lanes upon which in light and shadow 
trunk and leaf and drooping bunch are tremulously 
patterned. 

On either side of the lanes is the forest of bananas, 
the plants spaced twelve by fifteen feet apart and 
rising twenty, thirty, forty feet high. 

Here and there in this deep jungle of bananas the 
old stalks which have borne their single bunch of 
fruit stand up a yard from the ground as they were 
left after the harvesting; stalks now dry and dead 
and brown, their sap having flowed back to help 
nourish the sturdy young ‘‘followers’’ sent up from 
the roots. The leaves of once lofty heads carpet the 
ground where they le rotting, fertilizing the land 
that it may bring forth more; other leaves, bent or 
broken, hang from the plants, some still green, some 
yellowing into the brown of death. While above 
droops the green roof of fresh and vital leaves; 
tender young leaves, and mature leaves fringed and 
frayed with wind and age. Among them, hung high, 
are the great green bunches of bananas. 

Animal life within the plantations is soft-pedaled 
in harmony with the surrounding stillness. 

There is a procession of ants, leading from a 
tunnel of their own excavation to a green-leafed 


IN THE BANANAS 219 


vine many yards away. There the ants are busy, 
cutting from the leaves semicircular fragments with 
which they hurry back to the tunnel; pouring into 
its entrances bearing their fragments, and emerging 
unburdened, to return to the vine for more. They 
go and come over a six-inch trail, worn as smooth 
as the track of a cart-wheel by the countless march- 
ing of their myriad feet. And it is possible to hear 
the infinitesimal rustle of their passing; for in the 
hush of the plantations the smallest sound becomes 
important. They pass into the tunnel bearing green 
bits of leaf, and back again to the vine; as in Santa 
Marta the banana loaders had conveyed the great 
green bunches from freight-cars to ship. 

The ants thus move from vine to tunnel and back | 
as though their task were never done. And never 
do I obediently pause to ‘‘consider her ways,’’ with- 
out questioning whether ants and the industrialism 
which imitates them are, after all, so desirable. 
And has not a bird more wisdom as he sings on a 
swaying sunlit branch, recognizing alike the claim 
of work and of song? 

There are lizards, too, in the bananas; everywhere 
slender tiny lizards scuttling over and under the 
leaves; banana-green lizards with heads yellow like 
the yellow of the drying leaves and tails as brown 
as the dead stalks. There are also dark blue lizards 


220 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


with turquoise tails; so many lizards that there 1s 
constant rustling among the leaves. 

To them as to us every movement, every noise in 
the quiet of the plantations becomes significant. 
When I turn the page of my note-book they dart 
terrified from one hiding-place to another. Even 
the strident buzz of mosquitos is here subdued, and 
gauzy dragon-flies and great tobacco-brown butter- 
flies drift on silent wings in the patches of sunlight 
sifted down through the roof. There are invisible 
whispered chirpings, and everywhere is the infinitely 
soft whir of humming-birds, poised vibrant before 
the blossoms of the banana. 

To hear the rustling march of the ants you must 
bend close, for that is the softest of all the sounds 
in the green stillness where bananas live: the 
whirring of humming-birds’ wings is slightly more 
audible, and by comparison the sudden intermittent 
scurrying of lizards, over and under dry leaves, is 
almost loud, while the ventriloquial chirpings and 
the occasional tinkle of a frog somewhere in the 
labyrinth of irrigation trenches are clear sound in 
spite of their softness; and from time to time at 
irregular intervals there is a gentle thud as though 
something heavy fell to earth. 

Noises from the world outside come distance- 
dulled ; the sharp complaining cry of a high-perched 








THE FIRST “HAND” 


IN THE BANANAS 221 


hawk, eager parrots chattering in a treetop, the 
rattle of a cart along the road to Sevilla; all as 
subdued as echoes, and finally, in the depths of the 
bananas, ceasing to be. 

Then it is that we become aware of the rhythmic 
life-cycle of the banana; of the full-grown plants 
whose huge leaves roof in the stillness and of their 
descendants, the ‘‘followers,’’ those tender shoots 
which will in ten months be ready to produce fruit 
for Hurope and America, taking the place of those 
whose heads will have been cut off with the harvest- 
ing of their bunches. 

And the fruit-bearing plants go through a similar 
youth-to-maturity cycle. Plants, the purple tips of 
whose buds are just beginning to show above the 
sheathed green leaves which compose their trunks, 
stand beside older plants whose fruit is ready for 
cutting. In others the bud at the end of its long 
stalk has come up through the trunk and hangs 
drooping from its own weight. 

As there are ‘‘followers’’ in all stages of unfold- 
ing their young leaves, so there are buds in all 
gradations of development: buds like colossal ears 
of corn still in the husk, heavy pinkish-purple buds 
at the end of long flower-stalks. And there are buds 
in which the thick tough sheaths have begun to 
unroll; unrolling so slowly that to our dull eyes their 


222 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


movements are invisible; unrolling without sound 
audible to our ears, which must stoop low to catch 
the rustle of tramping ants. 

As the sheaths of the buds unroll, they reveal clus- 
ters of palest yellow blossoms, each blossom depend- 
ing from a possible banana; two and a half inches 
of blossom and an inch of embryonic banana. 

Such a cluster is destined, if all goes well, to be- 
come what the trade calls a ‘‘hand,’’ made up of 
from ten to twenty-five bananas, which are the 
‘‘fingers’’ of the ‘‘hand.”? 

The sheath curls back and upward into a tight 
roll, leaving just enough of itself to act as a sun- 
shade over the tiny flowering ‘‘hand,’’ which, at this 
stage of its development, points downward. It is 
before these flowers that the brilliant blue-backed 
humming-birds poise on softly whirring wings, 
blurred and vibrant. 

One by one the purple sheaths roll back, disclosing 
similar fruit-clusters arranged spirally about the 
flower-stalk; each cluster shaded by its overhanging 
sheath. But the young fruit soon outgrows this 
sunshade of babyhood, and the sheath, having served 
its purpose, falls with a little thud to the ground; 
bequeathing its task to the parasol-leaf which began 
life simultaneously with the bud and which has all 
this time been busily growing; developing into a 


IN THE BANANAS 223 


leaf different in character from the regular banana- 
leaves, a short broad leaf whose function is to shade 
the bunch as the bud-sheaths have shaded the indi- 
vidual clusters. Instinctively this parasol has 
located the point of greatest sun, and there it 
remains until the bunch is strong enough to dispense 
with protection, when the poor leaf dries up and is 
forgotten. 

Slowly the ‘‘fingers’’ of the ‘‘hands’’ have been 
increasing in length and thickness, drawing suste- 
nance from the stem; their number determined by 
the supply of available nourishment; the possible 
‘‘hands’’ always exceeding those which mature, for 
clusters too far from the source of the sap must 
starve, drying up and falling to the ground where 
lie the sheaths which in vain guarded their infancy. 

As the ‘‘hands’’ develop they gradually stand out 
from the stem. Thus the ‘‘hands’’ move, but by 
such infinitesimal degrees that we see nothing; in- 
ferring movement because here the fingers point 
downward; there they stand out ever so slightly 
from the stalk; here they are stiff green bristles at 
right angles; there they have begun to point upward, 
more and more upward until at last the blossom-end, 
which once faced the ground, is pointed skyward. 
And so skilfully placed around the stalk are the 
‘‘hands’’ that as they increase in size and turn 


224 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


upward they neatly overlap, no one cluster interfer- 
ing with another. 

In those bunches of sky-pointing fruit gradations 
of growth are as evident as in the plant and in the 
bud; for there are bunches whose fruit is still too 
thin to cut, bunches sufficiently developed for Euro- 
pean shipment, and bunches of fuller fruit ready for 
the shorter voyage of the American boats. 

This is life as the banana lives it, the epic of the 
banana, of which at night the frogs in the irrigation 
ditches seem to pipe. 

There is life and movement. But we never see the 
process. Only the results are apparent. We see the 
complete bud, see it in the various stages of its un- 
folding. Everywhere the embryonic clusters of 
fruit; on this bunch pointing in one direction, on 
another at a different angle. All about are the 
bunches, thin bunches and full bunches. There is 
the forest of adult plants, and the young shoots of 
the future. While upon the ground dead bud- 
sheaths and dead leaves disintegrate, fertilizing the 
soil. 

Although we thus see what has come to pass, we 
never see it happen. But without stirring from a 
given spot we may observe each stage in this life- 
cycle, and, mentally, telescoping the stages, we may 
construct in our minds a moving picture of this 





A BUNCH IN THE MAKING 





be 


IN THE BANANAS 225 


miracle of the banana, of whose living we may not 
detect so much as a whisper; that living which is 
even more intricate than the complicated organiza- 
tion which man has built up for the cultivation and 
for the delivery of bananas to the markets of the 
world. : 


With the heat of noon the great stillness in which 
bananas dwell grows more intense. There is less 
often the whir of wings; fewer lizards scuttle over 
crackling leaves; there are no longer chirpings or 
the tiny solo tinkle of a frog. With the death of the 
breeze fewer sheaths seem to fall, and there remain 
only the inexhaustible ants, whose rustle one must 
stoop to catch; the ants and a drowsy droning bee; 
while all about, by silent miracle, bunches of bananas 
come into being, miles of great green bunches; 
always green, for the fruit is never permitted to 
ripen in the plantations. : 

The hushed expectancy of afternoon follows upon 
this dormant midday; and again there is whir and 
chirp. But there is now a sense of hurry, a convic- 
tion of something impending in nature, as in Carta- 
gena there is a presentiment of something new about 
to happen among men. 

The air of this expectancy is hot, humid, oppres- 
sive, until a little breeze comes to stir the leaves 


226 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


with a sound as of pattering raindrops. And there 
is far-off muffled thunder. 

Up in the mountains we know that a deluge falls, 
but in the flat country of the bananas only a gentle 
shower follows upon the pattering breeze and the 
muffled thunder; for it is not yet October. 

And with the falling of that brief shower, we dis- 
cover that the long, graceful, silky, soft leaves are 
provided with a system of irrigation; as the Fruit 
Company has laid down an elaborate network of 
trenches leading into ditches, so the leaf of the 
banana has tiny trenches which feed a larger trench; 
for the great length of the leaf is ribbed with little 
troughs, three quarters of an inch apart; little chan- 
nels leading from the outer edge of the leaf to the 
midrib which is a deeper channel. This central 
channel leads down to the base of the leaf, where it 
joins the trunk. It is along the lines of the smaller 
channels that the winds whip the banana-leaf into 
its characteristic fringe, cutting the leaf along the 
lines of these drains. 

The shower falls, and we watch this irrigation 
system in action; the rain, striking the leaf, flows 
into the many lesser channels, is conducted to the 
center channel, and so down into the heart of the 
plant. And we are aware now of no sound but that 
of the softly falling rain and the dull distant thunder. 


IN THE BANANAS 227 


Even with the harvesting the stillness of the 
bananas is scarcely broken. We expected it to be 
an occasion of trampling noise; for five thousand 
bunches had been ordered from that section of the 
plantation adjacent to the bungalows, and the cut- 
ting, collecting, and loading were to be completed 
in the course of one day; for, as the men had said, 
‘‘You can’t wait with bananas.’’ All over the dis- 
trict, therefore, the cutting would proceed simulta- 
neously; five thousand bunches from one section; 
ten thousand from another; twenty-five hundred, 
and so on until the entire quota was assembled and 
ready to be hurried down by train, over the ninety- 
seven miles of banana railroad, to the dock at Santa 
Marta and to the waiting ship. 

We rose early on this day of harvesting, and by 
seven o’clock we were in the bananas. Iridescent 
raindrops still glittered on the listless beauty of 
the long drooping leaves; in sunlight and shadow 
the pattern of plant and bunch trembled on the 
grassy lanes; and there was the same vast hush, 
broken by rustle and timid invisible chirping. 

We must have made a mistake; we must be in the 
wrong part of the plantations, for here was no shout- 
ing activity. 

Wandering puzzled up and down the lanes and 
along the cart-road, we came from time to time upon 


228 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


a bunch lying by the roadside where some one had 
carefully, placed it upon a great banana-leaf and 
covered it with another, for ‘‘you can’t be too care- 
ful with bananas.’”? _ 

A couple of men on horseback cantered along the 
road and out of sight before we could question them. 
An ox-cart jogged off in the same direction. The 
cart had its floor and sides padded with the thick 
twisted fiber of dead banana-stalks. Wherever there 
lay a bunch by the roadside, the cart stopped, col- 
lected it, and went on. 

‘Oh, yes,’’ the driver told us, ‘‘they were cutting 
all over the district.’’ 

‘‘But where?’’ we questioned. 

‘‘Oh, everywhere,’’ vaguely inclusive. 

The cart passed, jogging slowly along and stop- 
ping to pick up bunches, lying under their leaves 
on the right and left of the road. And with its 
passing the plantation was left as quiet as upon the 
deserted days preceding the order to cut. 

In the green lanes there was nowhere any one to 
be seen. A humming-bird whirred very close, and 
there was the sudden intermittent crackle of scam- 
pering lizards. 

We jumped into a second cart, headed in the op- 
posite direction from the first. As we jounced along 
we peered down all the lanes. Sometimes there 


IN THE BANANAS 229 


would be a cart in the lane, driving slowly along and 
collecting those bunches which had mysteriously 
been placed by the roadside; mysteriously for we 
saw none in the act of being placed. Again, as in 
the life of the banana itself, results rather than 
processes were apparent. 

We sat in the back of the cart, swinging our feet 
in careless abandon as we bounced over the little log 
bridges that span the irrigation ditches, over the 
track of a railroad siding run down into the plan- 
tation to the various sheds where fruit is stacked 
awaiting collection. 

Occasionally we passed a freight-car which had 
been already backed down the siding and was being 
loaded with the great green bunches, after having 
first been lined with protecting banana-leaves. 

We bumped over these sidings and splashed 
through flooded areas where the sluice-gates had 
been opened, letting that water which had come 
down from the snows of the Sierra flow about the 
roots of whole districts; and we remembered that 
the banana grows best when its head is hot and its 
feet are wet. 

We jogged thus for long distances, often with 
never so much as another cart in sight, and only 
the occasional bunches lying by the roadside to sug- 
gest that we were to supply five thousand ‘‘stems’’ 


230 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


to the American boat just then docking at Santa 
Marta. We jogged under a blazing sun, for the cart- 
road does not share the green shade of the lanes, 
until we came to a receiving-shack on the main line 
of the railway. There we would wait, hoping to 
board one of the trains of ‘‘empties’’ and so return 
to the bungalow at Sevilla for lunch. Meanwhile 
there was shade in the shack. 

A cart was being unloaded, the oxen panting in 
the heat; but they would be rewarded later by a 
feast of bunches which had been discarded as not 
measuring up to the rigid standard set by the Fruit 
Company. 

We watched the men stack the bunches, close 
together, standing them on the thick end of their 
stems; the fruit thus pointed downward as in the 
days of its infancy, before the ‘‘hands’”’ turned 
slowly upward. So it will one day hang in corner — 
grocery shops, never again to point skyward as 
when it hung in the pride of its maturity among the 
great flapping leaves which roof the plantations. 

Like the freight-cars and the ox-carts the shack 
had been prepared to receive the fruit; its earth 
floor carpeted with leaves and its sides padded with 
fiber twisted into thick ropes. All along the line 
of this banana railroad, and on the arms which it 


IN THE BANANAS 231 


extends into the plantations, are just such little 
shacks. 

We sat on the leaves arranged for the bananas 
and waited for a train. A workman lay on his back 
on the leaves and sang, his bare toes wriggling in 
rhythm with the tune. From time to time a cart 
rattled in to be unloaded. And I talked to the super- 
intendent, a lean yellow man suffering from carote, 
a pigmentary disease which the natives think is 
caused by the continuous bite of what they call 
plaga; and plaga is composed of mosquitos, of the 
black flies whose bite leaves painful water-blisters, 
and of small beasts resembling chiggers whose 
presence results in great irritation of the skin. 

There is a black carote, seen in the interior, and 
the white variety with which my friend the overseer 
was afflicted, his hands and arms being covered with 
great pale blotches. 

While we waited he talked to me about Conserva- 
tism and Liberalism, the two great issues, he said, 
which were before his country. 

The laborer lying upon his back on the carpet 
of banana-leaves sang and wriggled his toes, while 
the overseer with carote spoke passionately about 
Liberalism, so passionately that I found myself 
pleading that revolution was not the way. 


232 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘*No, senora,’’ he assented, ‘‘revolution is not the 
way.’’ 

Thus in the heat of noon in a banana-shed we dis- 
cussed the future of civilization, while around us the 
bananas stood, stacked in quiet green rows; culti- 
vated and cut and stacked by the highly specialized 
organization which will deliver them to the markets 
of Kurope and of America; a great organized in- 
dustry which has made the desert bring forth fruit. 


It was not until afternoon that we finally saw the 
process of cutting which all day had been going on 
throughout the plantations up and down the line. 

The men, we discovered, go out by twos, the cutter 
and the backer. The cutter’s tools are a twelve-foot 
pointed stick and a sharp machete. Thus in couples 
they go through the sections apportioned them, their 
_trained eyes marking at once the bunches ready for 
‘shipment by British or American boats. The cutter 
then sticks the plant a few feet below the bunch, 
twisting the point, and slowly letting the bunch 
down within the reach of the backer, who grasps the 
bud-end of the fruit-stalk, carefully adjusting the 
bunch to his shoulders; while the cutter with swift, 
sure blows of the machete severs the bunch, strikes 
off the excess length of the stem, cuts two fresh long 
leaves which he places in the backer’s left hand, and 


IN THE BANANAS 233 


finally cuts the trunk of the plant down to about a 
yard from the ground. The backer then trots off 
with his burden to the roadside, depositing it there, 
upon one of his leaves, and covering it with the other 
as a protection against the sun. Allis accomplished 
quickly, dexterously, and so quietly that scarcely is 
the vast green stillness disturbed, even by the 
cutting of ninety-six thousand bunches. 


Once more it is night on the veranda. Empty 
glasses stand about on window-ledges, on the rail- 
ing, and on the floor. The windows of the bunga- 
lows are dark, and Andy has ceased to growl and to 
claw indignantly at the wire netting of his sleeping- 
cage. In the somber depths of the bananas frogs 
pipe softly of the miracle of living. 

It is midnight, and we have been waked by the 
sound of a train, a freight-train being assembled 
with much backing and shifting; a train made up 
of those locked and loaded cars which all day smaller 
engines have been bringing in from the branch-lines 
which tap the plantations. Although the train is 
but a stone’s throw from the veranda, its outline 
is lost in the pall of night. How many ears 
there are, each with its cargo of four hundred 
bunches, we cannot guess, but the train is long, for 
the distance between the red glow under the locomo- 


234 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


tive and the green lights marking the last car is 
great. Hung here and there, without regularity, 
are the lanterns which the men have been using; 
and as the train moves off down the line these 
lanterns swing against the sides. There are men 
lying on top of the cars who, although they have 
worked hard all day in the sun, sing as the train 
moves out. And what a pity it will be when they 
have become too civilized to sing! 

The swinging lanterns and the green lights dis- 
appear; the red glow of the rear light comes into 
view and vanishes. The first of the banana-trains 
has gone, carrying the bunches down to the dock at 
Santa Marta, forty miles away; where on the 
shoulders of men they will pass in continuous dizzy 
stream from freight-cars to revolving conveyors; 
carried as green leaf-fragments are borne aloft by 
ants in tireless procession; passing thus into the 
ship on the shoulders of men who toil like ants. 


CHAPTER XIV 
YELLOW AND BLUE AND RED 


. EN, GUACA.’’ The child spoke imperi- 

V ously, addressing a wing-clipped macaw, a 
macaw with lustrous plumage of yellow and blue and 
red; strong clear elemental colors. 

The bird scorned to obey, but that made no differ- 
ence; the humiliation was the same, for Guaca had 
once been a gorgeous, high-flying, free thing, con- 
descending only to tree-tops. 

Now it hobbled awkwardly about on the ground, 
stepping clumsily on its own toes; while a brown- 
legged child in a faded calico slip commanded arro- 
gantly, ‘‘Come’’; with the verb in the familiar 
second person, and the Colombian name for macaw 
abbreviated from guacamayo to guaca. 

I had just left the house of the hacienda of San 
Pedro Alejandrino, where nearly a hundred years 
ago Simon Bolivar had died. I had been wandering 
from room to room, seeking something which I felt 
to be withheld; for rooms know so much more than 
they are willing to tell. 


I had paused often in that final chamber of 
235 


236 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Bolivar, letting my eyes rest upon the scene which 
had been the last to imprint itself upon his slowly 
fading brain. 

I had looked through the grating of the long win- 
dow, across the grassless, sun-baked yard to the low 
white building which, when Bolivar gazed, had been 
the slave-quarters. Seeing the slaves come and go, 
he must have remembered the proclamations in 
which, nearly fifty years before Lincoln’s emanci- 
pation, he, Bolivar, had made the abolition of 
slavery one of the principles of his great Republic 
of Colombia. | 

It had been with dying eyes that Bolivar had 
looked across the white yard to the slave-quar- 
bersihin « 

His vast republic was going to pieces: Venezuela 
and Kcuador had broken away from the Union; three 
countries stood where Bolivar would have had but 
one; and each of the three was torn with the strife of 
jealous factions. ‘‘Independence,’’ Bolivar said, ‘‘is 
the only benefit we have gained, at the cost of every- 
thing else.’’ 

Slaves still went in and out of the quarters upon 
which his dimming eyes rested; and he was not to 
live to see them freed. 

The great wealth which he had inherited had all 
been poured with generous passion into the cause 


YELLOW AND BLUE AND RED 237 


of freedom. He would have America freed from 
Spain, and slaves freed from masters. 

Independence for the Spanish-American colonies 

. . that had been achieved; but Bolivar, looking 
across the yard, beyond the slave-quarters, to the 
spreading shade of a lavender-flowered tamarind- 
tree stirring in that December trade-wind, Bolivar 
could testify at what cost! 

He knew battle and massacre, bayonets and gal- 
lows and guns; for the years of struggle had been 
bloody cruel years, in which neither side gave mercy 
or quarter. 

While the sun and the tamarind-tree collaborated 
to make a quivering mosaic of light and shadow on 
the bare earth, Bolivar must have gazed, as I did; 
gazed, closed his eyes, and opened them to gaze 
again; while through his fevered brain there must 
have passed the unforgetable events of the Revolu- 
tion: the earthquake of 1812, the panic and horror 
which let Caracas fall again into the hands of the 
royalists; the siege of Cartagena; his declaration 
of ‘‘war to the death,’’ which he was later to regret 
and to rescind; the glorious intoxicating day when 
he was first hailed as Liberator; defeat again, and 
the twenty days of that wretched retreat from Cara- 
cas, that ‘‘emigration of 1814,’’ with its starvation, 
its fevers, its painful fleeing in the rain; the terrible 


238 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


march over the Andes when every horse had per- 
ished on the way, that march which he might well 
feel exceeded in difficulty the surmounting of the 
Alps by Hannibal or Napoleon. 

But painful marches and privation and danger 
were the chosen part of the luxuriously reared 
Bolivar: and his was the nature which ignored hard- 
ship and peril, which recognized no defeat but the 
enmity of his own people. 

So in those last eleven days of his life, spent at 
this sugar hacienda three miles out of Santa Marta, 
his mind would have dwelt rather upon triumphs 
than upon hardships; in reliving the victori- 
ous battle of Boyacd, the anguished scaling of 
the Andes would have been subordinated, while he 
lingered in detail upon his triumphal entry into 
Bogota after that decisive battle. 

Reflecting, Bolivar would have seen his life fall 
into two distinct epochs: the epoch of success which 
culminated in the independence of South America; 
and the epoch of failure which was his attempt to 
establish self-government in the newly liberated 
countries. | 

In the years of struggle against Spain nothing 
had dashed his dauntless spirit, soaring blithely in 
the heaven of his dream of an America freed by 
Simon Bolivar. 


YELLOW AND BLUE AND RED 239 


But, with the realization of that dream, had come 
the vision of a vast united South American nation, 
whose safety he believed to lie only in a strongly 
centralized government; any federal government, 
he felt convinced, was too weak to guide the destiny 
of so heterogeneous a population, at that time com- 
pletely inexperienced in the administration of its 
own affairs. 

But this second dream of Bolivar’s was not 
popular; it raised up for him a horde of clamorous 
enemies. ‘‘He desired for himself absolute sover- 
eignty,’’ they declared; charging him with being 
‘“mean and contemptible; a self-seeker; vain and 
ambitious; greedy for flattery.’’ His own country, 
Venezuela, refused even to treat with Colombia 
while the dangerous Bolivar remained on its soil. 

All this had scorched his very soul, for he longed 
above all things for the homage of his countrymen. 

He had seen Napoleon crowned in Paris in 1804. 
The crown he had thought a showy bauble; but the 
universal acclaim had led him to write: ‘‘That made 
me think of the slavery of my country, and of the 
glory which he who should free it would conquer. 
But how far was I from imagining that such for- 
tune awaited me!”’ 

This craving for homage seems to have been Boli- 
var’s one personal ambition. Together with a sin- 


240 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


cere passion to free his downtrodden people, it 
possessed him. 

‘‘Bolivar,’’ the Spanish general Morillo used to 
say, ‘‘Bolivar is the Revolution.”’ 

He had been that from the beginning. None knew 
it better than Bolivar himself, as, with body and 
fortune and restless soaring spirit all spent, he lay 
dying at the sugar plantation of San Pedro Alejan- 
drino. 

It was all recorded in his failing brain, all the way 
back to the beginning, to the death from yellow fever 
of his lovely Spanish bride, leaving him at nineteen 
a childless widower. 

‘‘But for the death of my wife,’’ he had written, 
‘‘T should not have made my second visit to Europe, 
nor have made such study of the world of men and 
of things which served me in the course of my politi- 
cal career. In Caracas or San Mateo there would 
not have been born in me those ideas which I 
acquired in my travels. The death of my wife put 
me early in the path of politics.’’ 

If Bolivar was the Revolution, then in his person 
the Revolution was born in Caracas on July 24, 
1783; born of aristocratic parents and christened 
Simén José Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad. 

This child who was to be the Revolution developed 


YELLOW AND BLUE AND RED 241 


into a slender man, incredibly slender and of medium 
height, with a figure ‘‘delicate, elegant, and mar- 
tial’’; a man whose face was of ‘‘extraordinary 
genius, of immense intelligence, and of profound 
thought’’; a face in which, when the large mouth 
with its long upper lip smiled, it revealed beauti- 
ful and well-cared-for teeth; a face terrible in its 
quick anger, which was, however, of short duration, 
giving place almost immediately to the grave tran- 
quillity of a repose lit by brilliant, keen, penetrating 
eagle eyes, deeply black. 

Such were the eyes which, grown tragic with mel- 
ancholy despair, had gazed dimly through the win- 
dow, to old slave-quarters and a tamarind-tree; 
gazing past the deserted sugar-mill, in front of which 
I had encountered the child giving orders to a wing- 
clipped bird whose plumage was yellow and blue 
and red. 

It was the personality of this Siméon Bolivar that 
I had sought as I wandered through the rooms. . 

The place was very quiet, immersed in the sun- 
shine of late afternoon. What had been once a busy 
sugar hacienda, with slaves coming and going, was 
now one of the many shrines of Bolivar; but about 
it still clung that great personality which had 
dominated to the end, the colorful spirit of a man to 


‘ 


242 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


whom none could be indifferent, who was as ardently 
loved as he was hated; a man of singular charm and 
talent and magnetism; a man adored by women. 

Those who knew this vivid Bolivar, this man who 
was the Revolution, describe him as having the 
bearing of a distinguished man of the world; as 
having been far-sighted and singularly keen of 
hearing; as having been recklessly generous and 
hospitable, although so simple in his food that he 
would often dine at home and then go late to a 
banquet where he would be supreme as toast-master. 
They say also that he drank with moderation; that, 
although the son of a country where even the infants 
smoke, he did not smoke at all; and that he very 
early gave up gambling. They tell us that he was 
as much at home in French literature as in Spanish, 
as well as being familiar with Italian and English 
authors; and that of them all it was Voltaire who 
was so greatly his favorite that he had memorized 
innumerable passages from his works. 

And the men who knew Bolivar describe him 
further as a tireless dancer, a wonderful horseman, 
a daring mountain-climber; they say that he could 
use either hand equally well in sword-play and that 
he was able to swim with his arms tied. 

Bolivar talked much and with a dazzling vivacity. 
‘‘The ideas of the Liberator,’’ some one wrote, ‘‘are 


YELLOW AND BLUE AND RED 243 | 


like his imagination, full of fire, original and new.”’ 
He could electrify men and, like Napoleon, possessed 
the magic of persuasion. 
_ Santander, one of the bitterest of his enemies, 
begged publicly before the Assembly that Bolivar 
be forbidden to attend the Convention at Ocana; 
saying that ‘‘Such is the influence and the secret 
force of his will that I myself upon infinite occasions 
have opposed him full of fury, and upon seeing and 
hearing him, he has disarmed me so that I have de- 
parted full of admiration. No one can contradict. 
General Bolivar face to face.’’ 

‘<The flame,’’ said the Duke of Manchester, after 
meeting this eager glowing Bolivar, ‘‘the flame has 
consumed the oil.’’ | 

And there are anecdotes to illustrate these de- 
scriptions. 

There is the story of the banquet at Angostura, 
where Bolivar, proposing a toast to dramatize his 
sentiments, had mounted the table, his small, slight, 
nervous figure pacing it from end to end, while he 
exclaimed, ‘‘Thus will I go from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific until an end is made of the last Spaniard!”’ 

There are tales, too, of how he would sing on the 
march, or recite the verses and the prose of those 
authors whom he loved. We are told that on those 
exhausting marches he would sing patriotic songs 


244 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


... yet I cannot help fancying that the Bolivar, who 
was a ‘‘tireless dancer and adored by women,’’ sang’ 
also the love-songs and the dances of his native land; 
those songs which are the incarnated spirit of 
Spanish South America, the songs he must have 
heard from his nurse, songs in which the Spanish 
and the Indian blended to form a new music, as with 
pain their blood had blended to create a new race. 

In that music there is Spaniard and Moor, Indian 
and African. It is at once pagan and deeply relig- 
ious, the music of abandon, yet profoundly sad, with 
a wistful hesitation, a heartbreaking catching of 
the breath. It was the music of Bolivar’s childhood, 
and it was inevitable that as he sang upon the march 
he should in the austere lonely beauty of the Andes 
have sung the songs of the land whose Liberator 
he had set himself to be. 

And then there is the story of Manuela Saenz, 
born more than a hundred years ago in Quito, a girl 
of great beauty and of amazingly masculine habits, 
having headed a squadron of cavalry to put down 
some sort of disturbance in Quito. It was almost 
a foregone conclusion that such a girl should have 
fallen in love with Bolivar, under whose protection 
she used to ride about Lima with an escort of Colom- 
bian cavalry, she wearing a gold-laced scarlet dolman 
and white breeches. 


YELLOW AND BLUE AND RED 245 


It was this Manuela who, when in Bogota assassins 
were crying, ‘‘Death to the tyrant!’’ at Bolivar’s 
very door, was able to convince him that resistance 
was hopeless and to persuade him to drop from the 
baleony and to flee through the streets; while she 
stayed to throw his would-be murderers off the scent, 
by declaring that Bolivar was in the hall of the 
Council of State, and thus giving him time to make 
his escape. 

Many years later, more than twenty years after 
Bolivar’s death at the hacienda of San Pedro Ale- 
jandrino, Garibaldi spent a day with Manuela at 
the little port of Paita on the arid coast of Peru. 
Writing of her he says: ‘‘Dofia Manuelita Saenz 
was the most graceful and courteous matron I ever 
saw. Having enjoyed the friendship of Bolivar, she 
was acquainted with the minutest details of the life 
of the great Liberator . . . I parted from her deeply 
touched.’’ 

Roaming from room to room of the house where 
Bolivar had come to die, I wondered why it was that 
Manuela had not been with him. Wandering, stand- 
ing before this and that; pausing before portraits of 
his fellow-patriots . . . before the desk he had used, 
the chest of drawers, the chair . . . before a framed 
photograph of a painting of his marriage in Madrid 
to the lovely little Maria Teresa de Toro . . . before 


246 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


the death certificate stating that Simon Bolivar had 
died on December 17, 1830 . . . lingering before a 
crisply black lock of his hair cut one hour and forty 
minutes later ... before his miniature... and 
before a copy of his will. ... 

It was here that they had brought him to die. The 
sailing-vessel on which he had taken passage for 
Jamaica had put into Santa Marta, as Bolivar was 
too ill to continue the voyage; and because he found 
the close air of the town so suffocating Joaquin de 
Mier had put at his disposal his house at San Pedro 
Alejandrino. 

Not long before, Bolivar had written to a 
friend, ‘‘I have scarce breath enough to carry me 
through the last days which remain to me of my 
mortification.’’ 

In the room to which I so often returned to look, 
as Bolivar had looked, across to the slave-quarters 
and the tamarind-tree, that scanty breath had 
ebbed; and there seven days before his death he had 
dictated to a secretary his last proclamation: 


I have been the victim of my persecutors who have conducted 
me to the door of the sepulcher. . . . On disappearing from the 
midst of you my affection tells me that I must manifest my 
last desires . . . I aspire to no other glory than the consolidation 
of Colombia ...my last vows are for the happiness of the 
country. If my death contributes to the cessation of division, I 
shall descend tranquil to the grave. 


YELLOW AND BLUE AND RED 247 


I had made many times the circuit of the still, 
deserted rooms, about which hovered that departed 
personality, before I had come out to walk under 
the tamarinds and the mangos, where I discovered 
the macaw which, wing-clipped and hobbling awk- 
wardly, nevertheless remained brilliantly yellow and 
red and blue; repeating in its plumage the strong 
clear colors of the flag of the free Republic of 
Colombia which floated above the death-place of 
Bolivar. 

“‘Ven, Guaca,”’ the child commanded, brandishing 
a stick over the proud, high-flying thing now brought 
to earth. ‘‘Ven, Guaca’’... 


CHAPTER XV 
IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 


fe gravitated toward us as though some irre- 
sistible force impelled his shy reluctant feet, 
compelling them to bring him the length of that 
upper veranda of the Hotel Magdalena at Puerto 
Berrio. , 

We bore the indefinable air of those whose 
language is English, and Jim was hungry for his 
own speech: for of course his name was Jim; it 
could n’t have been anything else, he being the 
young, eager blond creature that he was. And his 
last name ... equally of course, to that sort of 
person, a last name does n’t matter. 

‘‘T wonder,’’ he began, by way of opening the con- 
versation, ‘‘I wonder if you’re interested in birds? 
. . . Then,’’ he looked at his watch, ‘‘in twenty min- 
utes you’re going to see a sight. . . . You know, I 
thought you ’d be interested. Every night they 
come and roost in these palm-trees . . . thousands 
of them. You ’ll see. They ’ll come just after the 


hotel turns on its lights. I ’ve been here off and on 
248 


IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 249 


some fifteen times in the last year, and they ’ve 
never failed me yet. You could set a clock by them.’’ 

Jim drew up a chair, as though, since we were to 
wait together for the birds, we were already friends. 

But we must excuse his appearance: he was just 
as he’d ridden in four days from the mine, to get 
the train at Porcecito; a fool expressman had by 
mistake put his stuff on an up-river boat; he ’d been 
in Puerto Berrio eight days, waiting for it to come 
back; and you couldn’t buy much in the village, out- 
side of sandals and guitars and tin dishes. But he 
had a celluloid collar . . . did I know what a won- 
derful thing a celluloid collar was? He demon- 
strated its merits: it could be sponged off every 
night. 

Yes, he was a miner. . . had n’t we guessed that? 
Contemplating him, I admitted that we might have 
guessed it; especially as the Department of Antio- 
quia, half-way up the Magdalena River, is the great 
mining region of Colombia, where, even before the 
Spaniards, Indians had worked mines, which are 
said still to produce more gold than all the rest of 
South America. 

It seemed therefore fitting that our first acquaint- 
ance in Antioquia should be a miner, even though 
he did happen also to be a gringo, instead of a native. 
And Jim in his poetic impulsive youngness, lent 


250 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


himself to symbolism, becoming easily the essence 
of Antioquia, rather than a one hundred per cent 
eTingo. 

‘‘Oh,’’ he was saying, ‘‘there’s gold every- 
where ... in the mountains and the rivers. The 
natives are born miners and prospectors, but there 
are plenty of foreigners, too, mining here in 
Antioquia——”’ 

He broke off as though that waked some unwel- 
come memory, and returned to the subject of the 
swallows which in a few moments would come to 
roost in the palms. 

‘“‘There!’’ . . . If we looked very high we could 
see tiny black specks, like motes; revolving motes 
. . . high in the sky. 

And then the lights went on: powerful electric 
lights flashing all along the upper and the lower 
verandas which inclose the Hotel Magdalena; flash- 
ing also in the upper and lower galleries of the patio 
which makes of the hotel a hollow square. 

The lights blazed, for the hotel is prodigal of 
electricity; and the distant motes became nearer, all 
the time nearer, and more numerous, until at last 
they were seen to be truly birds; thousands of little 
birds dark against the sky. Soon they were close 
enough for us to hear that as they circled and 
whirled they incessantly called, as if in their dizzy 


IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 251 


aownward whirl they were crying out to prevent 
one from colliding with another. 

Thus they circled and wheeled and twittered, 
always nearer, and then suddenly down in a great 
swift dip, flying straight and unhesitating to the 
three palms in front of the hotel. 

The palm-fronds bent beneath their weight, as 
though a great wind had manifested itself in the 
shape of thousands of slate-colored swallows with 
mottled brown breasts. . 

Their fluttering little figures filled the leaves, 
where for an hour they kept up a ceaseless chatter 
before at last settling themselves in close rows. 

A fellow-traveler, a padre, picked up one luckless 
bird which in the speed of its descent had flown 
against the wall of the veranda. He brought it over 
to us, laying the stunned and terrified little creature 
in one of Jim’s strong mining hands. It lay there 
quivering, while Jim, quite unconscious of us or of 
the padre, soothed and petted and reassured its 
throbbing little form, placing it finally ever so gently 
on the railing, his hand hovering protectingly for a 
moment before he slowly withdrew it. 

After just a minute’s hesitation, the little swallow 
was off into the dusk. 

‘““Trying his wings,’’ said Jim. 

‘*Yes, and his nerve.’’ 


252 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


We spoke softly, as one does when some faculty 
is intensely concentrated; for all our eyes strained 
into the dusk, following the little figure out, and 
back to its final perch on the palm-tree. 

Again, this time in the glare of the dining-room 
crowded with men—traveling salesmen and pro- 
moters and miners—awaiting up- and down-river 
boats, or catching the morning train to Medellin, 
Jim at once joined us at the table. 

He had a story of trouble; of his all, invested in 
a mine, only to find later that he had purchased the 
mine’s debts as well as the mine. His contract had 
been made with foreigners, Kuropeans; a man and 
his wife; who had handled the thing so shrewdly 
that it was impossible to get them, either under the 
Colombian or the United States law. 

He went into detail, describing the night when 
he ’d confronted them with their fraud and had 
sworn, ‘‘You ‘ll never snare another, for you’ ll 
have a mountain to pass...and I’m that 
mountain.’’ 

He dwelt upon that. When you’ve been ig- 
nominiously cheated, it is comforting to think of 
yourself as an impassable mountain. 

After he ’d warned them, he ’d gone out of the 
house; out over the trail to Hanson’s; a trail that 


IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 258 


men didn’t care about traveling, even by day. It 
had been late when he knocked at Hanson’s door. 

‘“Who is it?”’ 

Te ss Jani,’? 

And Hanson had opened. 

‘Have you had anything to eat?’’ 

S*¢No.’? 

**T ’Il call the cook.’’ 

When Jim had eaten, Hanson put the question: 
‘Where are your animals?”’ 

“*T walked.’’ 

After they ’d smoked a long time Hanson re- 
marked, ‘‘I ’ve seen six come out of that house 
before, but I never saw one come quiet like you.’’ 

Hanson had lent him a mule and had then fol- 
lowed him to take away his gun. ‘‘If you go with 
a gun, Jim,’’ he ’d said, ‘‘they ’ll swear your life 
away.’’ 

Jim told us the story in great detail, apparently 
finding nothing inadequate in the laconic sympathy. 
of Hanson. Jim himself would never be limited in 
the expression of sympathy; the swallow could 
testify to that; but he accepted the world of miners 
as he found it, and Hanson he thought to be a fine 
fellow who ’d lent him a mule and cautioned him 
about the gun, 


254. COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


From time to time in the telling of the story, Jim 
had declared ‘‘No, figures don’t lie, but liars 
figure.’’ He represented himself as having said it 
many times to that woman who knew how to evade 
so many laws; that woman back there at the mine 
four days by mule from the railroad. 

Then once more he swiftly shifted the talk to the 
swallows. 

We were leaving in the morning by the Medellin 
train? Then he would n’t see us again, for when 
we returned he ’d be off down the river. But we 
must watch for the birds when we came back; he ’d 
guarantee that we ’d be able to set a clock by them; 
and in the morning we must be sure to see them go; 
they ’d be leaving before the Medellin train went 
out. 

Nearly a year later there came to us in New York 
a letter from this Jim in which, with no word of 
bankruptcy or mining swindles, he wrote, ‘‘You 
have probably forgotten who I am, but you will 
remember when I tell you that together we watched 
the swallows come to roost in the palm-trees at 
Puerto Berrio.’’ 

And I am sure that Jim will forgive the telling 
of his tale, for after all isn’t that the only 
way I can help him to become that impassable 
‘“mountain’’? 


IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 255 


The hotel at Puerto Berrio stands on a bluff 
above the river and above the little village. From 
the village at night it looks like a great ship with 
upper and lower decks ablaze with light. In the 
dark little streets, which stop suddenly because if 
they did not they would run into the river, the hotel 
seems a thing apart, a thing which has nothing to 
do with life as it is lived in a village whose streets 
pass so quietly between rows of one-storied, two- 
roomed little houses, in whose doorways men, 
women, and children smoke in the warm gentle 
night. 

After one has been traveling about Colombia, the 
plumbing of the Hotel Magdalena seems almost 
ostentatious, like too many jewels. I have never 
seen anything like it south of the Panama Canal 
Zone. It flaunts its white tiles and its nickel-plated 
fixtures. Great fuzzy moths flounder about in the 
little pools left after needle- and shower-baths; for 
not only are these baths wonderful to behold, but 
they actually work; quite unlike the hotel in Girardot 
which sends a small boy through incoming trains to 
distribute printed slips announcing that the hotel 
offers plumbing which operates night and day; slips 
which should read, ‘‘neither night nor day.’’ 

It was in meditating upon the Hotel Magdalena 
that I came to realize that the great contribution 









256 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


rests upon the part we have inlaia ie 
ve of Piaraven se: And, using 


sonteihaliad worthy of a place beside art and lett 

At this Hotel Magdalena, not only does the plum y 
ing work all night, but throughout the night the — 
electric lights of verandas and galleries blaze, and 
great fans in the ceilings unflaggingly whirl. And 
all night the station bell rings the hours, the village 
employing shifts of men to do the ringing, waking 
with exasperating regularity the would-be sleeper 
who wonders why villagers must know the night 
hours, when by day they are perfectly content to 
have the station bell busy with other matters. Then 
at half-past four the bells of the little church at the 
foot of the bluff are clamorous about mass; soon 
after, a puffing, whistling locomotive makes up the 
morning train, and as tracks and station are also 
at the foot of the bluff, sleep is definitely banished, 
and there is no possible excuse for missing that 
daily train to Medellin. 


And so we rose to ring for coffee, wondering all 
over again how the South American does with so 
little sleep; for always the days of the traveler begin 


i NS 
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IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 25 


thus early, and always the night is an interrupted 
performance. 

But with the coffee came the rewarding dawn. 

From the veranda on the height of the bluff at 
Puerto Berrio I watched the pale eastern light 
slowly spread above the blue horizon clouds. 

Waiting until the train should be ready, I sat 
looking out over the river, my pencil almost without 
direction recording the scene. 

It wrote that the three palms dripped with whis- 
pering birds; that a rooster crowed; that a renewed 
clang of bells crashed into the dawn; that the sky 
grew faintly pink behind the jungle, while electric 
lights still burned, but with all their dazzle put out 
by the rosy sky; and that the river suddenly sepa- 
rated itself from the dark line of the forest and 
gleamed in the pink glow. 

‘<The birds in the palms,’’ it wrote, ‘‘linger, talk- 
ing very softly, as if not yet quite awake. The light 
fast deepens and spreads. There is the rooster, 
far off. Men walk about the veranda in their 
pajamas; and there is the odor of black coffee. Now 
roosters are crowing everywhere. The electric 
lights seem quite silly in the flooding day which 
comes up across the river; the day shows us how 
the birds sit in close rows along the ribs of the palm- 
leaves, how they stretch their wings, and how at last 


258 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


they rise in a dark cloud from the palms, whose 
leaves spring back, released from the multiplication 
of their tiny weights.’’ 


The train led us at once through jungle, where 
steaming mist lay over the trees, and where, when 
we stopped to take wood, mist shrouded the bamboo 
huts. From the depths of the forest a distant bird 
whistled, something very near sweetly piped, and 
there was an answering whistle, before we started 
off again in the fog. 

When the sun had dispelled the mist we saw that 
it was through green tropic country that the rail- 
road out of Puerto Berrio has cut its path, a coun- 
try whose sparse population clings to that right of 
way which the road maintains, despite all the efforts 
of an encroaching jungle. 

It is a mulatto population, living for the most 
part in hut villages along the line, even their ceme- 
teries utilizing the railroad clearing, where little 
wooden crosses, generally painted black, mark the 
graves; villages and graves alike standing in single 
file along the track. 

Gold-bearing streams foam over stones under 
dense overhanging vegetation, under great ferns 
and vine-decked flowering trees. Sometimes bridges 
cross these streams; a mossy log linking the banks, 


IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 259 


a plank suspended from the trees, or merely two 
lengths of slippery bamboo. The water which 
rushes under the bridges is red, and if there is a 
trail up the forested hillside, that too is red. 

From this zone of tropics and mulattos we climbed 
up into open rolling pastoral country, where the 
rivers have lost their ruddy color, and flow as clearly 
calm as though they kept no tryst with caressing 
ferns and shadowy overarching trees, through which 
the sunlight will filter, to dance on glinting copper. 

We climbed to a green valley, down to which the 
river Nus cascades in a series of seven great falls; 
up to Limon, the end of the line on the Puerto 
Berrio side of the Pass, where the trains dump their 
passengers and their freight. 

Some day there will be a tunnel through the moun- 
tain which separates Limon from Santiago, on the 
other side of the Pass; but now rickety horse-drawn 
carriages, high surreys, stage-coaches to which 
mules are harnessed, mule-carts, automobiles, and 
motor-buses bridge the hiatus between the terminals. 

Little streams tumble across the road which winds 
up and over La Quiebra; the road of many carts; 
for all that enters or leaves Antioquia must journey 
this way. The short stretch of railroad from 
Medellin to Amaga cannot be counted, since it makes 
no connection with the outside world, simply 


260 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


tapping a section of the coal and coffee district. 
One day . .. in ambitious Colombia they are fond 
of saying what is to happen one day .. . one day 
the Amaga railway may be continued to the head 
of navigation on the upper Cauca. Antioquia will 
then have an outlet through the fertile agricultural 
valley of the Cauca, by Cali to Buenaventura on the 
Pacific coast of Colombia, that rainy steaming little 
port of Buenaventura which we had visited two 
years before on our way to HKeuador. 

But that road is still a dream, and Antioquia’s 
coffee destined for Europe and North America, is 
carted over the Pass of Quiebra, down to the wait- 
ing trains which convey it to the port of Puerto 
Berrio, whence it proceeds by the slow way of the 
Magdalena river-boats. Thus every year are 180,- 
000 bags, of 138 pounds each, hauled in carts over 
the Pass. These carts return loaded with boxes 
and crates of manufactured articles, containing 
everything from a Paris hat to a piano or an 
automobile. 

In company with such going and coming carts we 
climbed to the top at five thousand feet, and then 
down over a serpentine road to Santiago on the 
other side, where coffee-sacks were coming in on 
the backs of oxen; pouring in as though the supply 
of both oxen and coffee were endless. 





EDELLIN 


DEVOUT M 





IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 261 


We had not been many minutes on the train which 
took us out of Santiago before we realized that 
Antioquia is one thing on the Limon side of the Pass 
and quite another on the Medellin side. We had 
left behind the steaming tropical forest and entered 
into high temperate sunshine, into a fertile land- 
scape from which it was easy to infer the character 
of the population. 

Antioquia beyond La Quiebra is a revelation of 
what may happen in a climate of everlasting spring, 
well out of range of death-dealing mosquitos; a 
revelation of what may happen when under such 
conditions a people aspire to the democratic ideal 
of living each upon his own property. For the 
climate has bred a healthy race, free from the fevers 
and lassitude of the hot country, while the system of 
small landholdings has stimulated ambition, thrift, 
and industry. And from the train window the result 
may be read. 

We passed through a mountainous country, where 
the central Cordilleras are broken into great rolling 
hills and vast valleys; through the trim tidy villages 
of these valleys, villages of white houses and white 
cathedrals; and through tidy farms where milk- 
white cattle with black velvet-lined ears grazed on 
green fields. We stopped at concrete red-tiled sta- 
tions, surrounded by gardens of heliotrope and 


262 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


geranium, hibiscus and rose, where water trickled 
in little concrete fountains. 

It did not seem quite real, this landscape which 
was as immaculate as Europe and as undefiled by ad- 
vertisements as the jungle. 


Colombia is as proud of Antioquia as of the Cauca 
Valley, for in Antioquia, in spite of the transporta- 
tion difficulties, the country has achieved its greatest 
industrial development. 

Every Colombian you meet insists that you must 
see the Departamento de merry with its capital 
at Medellin. 

It is a great department with an area of 24,000 
square miles and a population of 817,000. Medellin, 
they will tell you, has 80,000 inhabitants, and in all 
South America few cities of its size possess such 
wealth. Nowhere are the girls so beautiful, and 
nowhere are the people so energetic. You will also 
be told of the vague tradition that they are de- 
scended from converted Jews who long ago emi- 
grated to this section of Colombia. And of course 
your mind will be a chaotic maze of figures about 
the coffee and gold output, about breweries and 
iron-works, cotton and cloth mills, and factories 
for the manufacture of soap and shoes and glass 


IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 263 


and candles; everything in fact, but ‘‘. . . ships and 
sealing-wax.’’ 

So you will go into Antioquia, as I did, quite 
unprepared for the beauty of the mountain-tumbled 
country, and for the pastoral peace which so domi- 
nates factories and mills that Antioquia beyond the 
Pass becomes for you a psalm of ‘‘green pastures 
and still waters.’’ 

Through the city of Medellin a river ripples under 
big lovely trees which hang their lavender blossoms 
over the water; and on each side of the street which 
follows this river are houses set in gardens. 

There is a white cathedral with towers; there is 
the old church of Vera Cruz with the flat facade of 
colonial days; and there are great new churches in 
Romanesque style, built of the brilliant red brick of 
Antioquia. And at Sunday mass these churches 
overflow into the streets, where many who cannot 
enter kneel devoutly. 

Being a Latin-American city, there is of course 
a tiny park in honor of Bolivar, a square where 
flowers bloom as though blooming were an event 
instead of a perennial performance. 

Pretty girls in light dresses and big hats go about 
with a freedom unknown in Bogota or Cartagena. 
There are even girls in business, bobbed-haired 
seforitas sitting in cashiers’ desks or acting as 


264 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


stenographers, all with a brisk air of independence. 

The breakfast-boys who carry the ‘‘eleven 
o’clocks’’ to offices and shops have any exposed food 
protected by wire covers. Even in a poor shop near 
the railroad yards, waiting glasses of milk were 
covered with a long slab of glass. 

One day a barefoot servant with her black hair 
in hanging braids came into the hotel dining-room 
bearing a gift, strawberries arranged on a silver 
tray, covered by a wire cone, and surrounded by red 
camellias. 

In Medellin there are certain characteristic 
sounds: the sharp clink of horses’ hoofs over the 
small well-laid cobbles; and the voice of Antioquia. 
The voice which comes in through the windows of 
the hotel is unlike any other in Colombia, unlike the 
careless rapid slur of the coast or the rising melody 
of Bogota. The voice of Medellin is the voice of 
that mango-vender who had seemed to me so singu- 
larly out of key with easy-going Cartagena. Lis- 
tening to those imperious staccato cries of Medellin, 
I realized that beyond doubt my mango-man came 
from the progressive Department of Antioquia, 
whose voice is the voice of command, as Bogota 
speaks with the tongue of persuasion, while the 
coast is wistfully dreamy, crying charcoal as though 
it were a dirge, melancholy sweet. 


<= 


i 
— 








IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 265 


We went one night to hear the Spanish poet 
Villaespesa read his verses to a select audience; we 
covered the route of the electric car lines; we drove 
to all the suburbs; and we wandered much about the 
poor quarters of the city, following the Medellin 
River, dark and cool under its willows, to the out- 
skirts where negroes live in the neatest imaginable 
little one- or two-roomed houses, each with its tiny 
vegetable garden and its microscopic veranda, gay 
with purple bougainvillea, or with coral vines in 
pink bloom. 

Laundry work often hangs to dry in these 
verandas, but the flowers which blossom about the 
houses are the same as those about the more 
pompous mansions of the rich; for every negro cot- 
tage has its glory of crimson hibiscus, of waxy red 
or white camellias, of carnations and of every rose 
that ever made June the month of brides. 

Even the railroad yards in Medellin are tidy and 
flowery. 

In Bell’s invaluable ‘‘Commercial and Industrial 
Handbook of Colombia,’’ I had read that in the city 
of Medellin it is the custom for servants and labor- 
ers to buy their homes on the instalment plan. 

Strolling about, looking for slums and finding 
none, impressed everywhere with the sense of a 
calmly ordered civilization, I wondered... . 


266 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


On the way out of Antioquia we stopped off to 
visit a famous placer gold-mine where water brought 
down from the hills was washing out the bed of the 
deflected Porce River. And there we ran into an 
encampment of importunate Gipsies in full, figured 
skirts, with flowered aprons and necklaces of silver 
dollars. 

Our deviation from the regular routine of travel 
brought us by night to the terminus at Santiago, 
where each native who crowded about the train was 
equipped with a swinging lantern, by the light of 
which he insisted upon establishing us and our be- 
longings in the motor which we had ordered to take 
us over the Pass. 

In a blackness as of midnight we climbed the de- 
serted road, so populous by day. We wound and 
climbed, splashing darkly through streams; winding 
past motionless deserted carts, waiting for the 
morning when men and animals would give them 
life; winding thus solitary among abandoned carts, 
up to the top, and down to the glimmering lanterns 
of Limén; down to the spotless hotel, where, because 
it was not the custom to spend a night, we were the 
only guests to be lulled to sleep by cascades leaping 
down a mountain with that soft foamy roar, which 
is somehow quieter than silence. 


IN AND OUT OF ANTIOQUIA 267 


On the following day we completed the journey 
back to Puerto Berrio, which is the exit as well 
as the entrance of Antioquia; passing again 
through the region of alternate jungle and mulatto 
settlements. | 

I recall pausing for wood at one of those little 
settlements. 

It was dusk. Between two thatched huts a small 
sketchily clad boy, perhaps twelve years old, sat on 
a log eating his supper from a tin plate balanced on 
his thin yellow knees. Beside him on the log a hope- 
fully patient black and white cat watched with un- 
blinking eyes his every mouthful. The boy finished 
the meal. No, the cat was going to get nothing, not 
even the scraps. The child took his plate into the 
hut and delivered it to the woman who served him. 

He stalked out; turned back; ‘‘surely,’’ the cat 
thought; but the boy returned only to get his cane, 
which was a length of young bamboo, cut down by 
the river’s brink. Then, cane in hand, and still 
masticating, he strode magnificently over the rail- 
road ties. 

Now that his meal was over, he would see the 
world; and the train is the world to those settle- 
ments clustered at intervals along the line. 

*“A ver la cola... la cerveza!’’ The children 


268 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


walked up and down under the car windows, crying 
their tepid bottled drinks; cola and beer. 

The train moved off, and candles began to show 
their flickering light through the crevices of bamboo 
walls; while the little picture of that dominant male, 
with his cane and his scorn of cat and of woman, 
remained to make me smile, until it momentarily 
faded, while I wondered whether we should be too 
late to see the coming of the swallows ... Jim’s 
swallows ... to the palms of the Hotel Magdalena; 
that hotel which was just the sort of place you ’d 
expect to find at the doorway of enterprising 
Antioquia. 


i 


CHAPTER XVI 
INSCRUTABLE DOORS 


T was Sunday morning and our first day in Bo- 
I gota. In chill misty drizzle we walked, unpro- 
tected across the bare plaza of Bolivar upon which 
our hotel fronted, across to the shops on the oppo- 
site side of the square. Because we had flown from 
the Caribbean coast to the terminus of the railway 
by which one climbs to the high plateau, and because 
in Colombia one flies by weight, we had left in Bar- 
ranquilla most of our possessions, including um- 
brellas. 

We hurried therefore across the plaza to the 
shops, where, to be sure, there were umbrellas, but 
at a cost astonishingly out of proportion to their 
value. 

Why? we questioned as we examined critically 
a clumsy cotton affair with a great hooked handle. 

But umbrellas were not manufactured in Colom- 
bia, the salesman explained. This one had come all 
the way from Spain. It was not, however, the ocean 
voyage which was responsible for the price, but the 
slow shipment from the coast to the interior. 


Because we had flown we did not yet fully appre- 
269 


2%0 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


ciate the tedious stages of that up-river journey, 
which we were later to experience in detail, and 
which we now saw, as it were, through the eyes 
of a clumsy cotton umbrella. 

Landing at Puerto Colombia it had been trans- 
ferred from ship to railway, and at Barranquilla 
from freight-car to river-boat, in which it had slowly 
struggled up against the swift current of the Magda- 
lena to La Dorada—six days, eight, ten; almost any 
number of days if the water were low, and running 
aground a frequent calamity. The mails would when 
possible be rushed through to La Dorada in six days, 
but an umbrella was only freight and might be de- 
layed on the lower river an indefinite time. 

At La Dorada the umbrella, upon whose purchase 
we had now decided, had been again transferred, 
this time to the railroad around the rapids to Bel- 
tran, where it again journeyed by river to Girardot, 
there to be carried up that long flight of steps from 
the river to the freight-car in which it had climbed 
the Andes to Factativa; and, because of a difference 
in gage, it was again transferred, this time to the 
Sabana line by which it had finally arrived at 
Bogota. 

The umbrella at any price was clearly a bargain, 
under the protection of which we set forth to ex- 
plore this inaccessible capital of a vast country. 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 271 


We went first from church to church; into the 
huge and crowded cathedral; into the church of San 
Ignacio de Loyola, where a sign urges the pious for 
the love of God not to defile His temple by expectora- 
tion; into Santa Clara, lovely with its richly deco- 
rated ceiling and its walls thickly lined with paint- 
ings, dark and mellow in their heavy gold frames; 
and into the church of El Carmen, where a kneeling 
man beat his breast under his poncho. 

At glittering far altars gorgeous priestly robes 
were busy about the ritual of the church. Voices 
intoned. There was the confused murmur of wor- 
shiping response; the movement and very faintly 
the click of beads slipped along rosaries; there was 
incense and many candles; oh, so many candles 
blazing in churches, where the devout knelt to the 
very doors. 

At noon, when mass was over, the shops closed 
for the day, drawing their heavy iron gratings and 
turning the keys in their great padlocks. Then sud- 
denly every one seemed to disappear, shopkeepers 
and customers and the crowds which had thronged 
the churches. 

It was then that I first realized Bogota as a city of 
inscrutable doors. 

We returned to the hotel for midday breakfast 
in a quiet cold little dining-room where bowls of 


272 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


roses and sweet peas glowed, while the conversation 
of promoters was called from table to table; a hotel 
whose salon was adorned with photographs of Lord 
Kitchener and of their Majesties. And in that 
salon one might shiver over magazines describing 
the costumes of Lady This and Duchess That at 
functions which had months ago passed into history. 

In the afternoon we walked again about Bogota, 
now with the umbrella crooked over one arm, for 
although the drizzle was over, we could not be sure 
whether the day was gray in memory or in prophecy. 
We walked under the colonnade of the imposing 
Capitol, a building on so grand a scale that it dwarfs 
even the cathedral. We discovered little parks and 
visited many churches, each with some distinctive 
quality which fixed it in the memory; as Santa 
Clara will always be to us the church of many pic- 
tures, so La Tercera remains as the church of beau- 
tiful carving, Las Nieves the church of simplicity, 
and Las Aguas the church of age. 

We explored, doing nothing in detail, but forming 
those first impressions which precede intimate study. 
And as there seems to be in existence no such thing 
as a guide-book of Bogota, our explorations were 
necessarily discoveries. We learned by walking 
about the city that it is laid out in calles, running 
east and west, intersected at right angles by carreras — 








ROOFS OF BOGOTA 





INSCRUTABLE DOORS 273 


running north and south. We located for ourselves 
its tram-lines; we discovered which were the streets 
of jewelers and silversmiths, and where Bogota pur- 
chases imported hats and frocks. 

We strayed beyond asphalt to cobble and soon 
beyond cobble to mud, wandering finally to the set- 
tlement of Egipto on the slope back of the city, 
where the Indian population lives in tiers of thatched 
huts. 

We discovered a three-story building from whose 
roof we looked down upon a red-tiled Bogota, carved 
into segments by straight and narrow streets, while, 
above us, the church of Monserrate crowns one of 
the two peaks at whose feet Bogota nestles. 

We descended again into the city, passing occa- 
- sional youths with guitars, and pausing in the park 
of Santander to watch the men who sat at little 
tables playing chess in the cold shadow of tall 
funereal evergreens, which surround the statue of 
Santander, as in Cartagena royal palms assemble 
to do honor to an equestrian Bolivar. And the 
trees of the Parque de Santander are dark, as the 
costumes of Bogota’s inhabitants are dark, in con- 
trast to the light and the whiteness of tropical cities. 

We had come—flown—from those tropics where 
doors stand open and people gather on balconies 
and behind window-gratings, seeking the breeze. 


274 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Here we wandered through calle and to carrera and 
back to calle, past closed curtained windows and in- 
scrutable doors. 

There were rich doors, massive and iron-studded, 
with high-placed knockers in the shape of hands; 
as well as the many smaller and more modest ones. 
And behind these doors had disappeared all those 
whose murmured worship had filled the churches. 


This was Bogota on a Sunday afternoon in the 
summer of 1923; nearly four hundred years after 
Jiménez de Quesada had founded it in the name of 
his king. 

Cunninghame Graham’s thrilling life of Quesada 
had vivified for me the conquest of Colombia and 
the early history of Bogota. Pedro Ibanez gave me 
Bogota from the first day of its existence to the end 
of the nineteenth century, gave it in detail and from 
the Colombian point of view. And I had seen 
through the more recent eyes of Father Zahm; of 
Scruggs, the American minister; and of Hder, who 
writes with the authority of long residence. 

IT could thus picture every step of the city’s de- 
velopment, and yet as we wandered by calle and 
carrera past inscrutable doors I felt myself a 
stranger. 

The air was high and cold and quiet, as though 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 275 


the story of this far-away city were not one of the 
most stirring of all the stirring tales of America 
of the South, which, with its treasure of legend 
and tradition and history, awaits our tardy 
discovery. 

Not until we explore Mars will there be again 
such adventure as the Spanish conquerors knew; 
adventure, that is, in the simplest sense, excluding 
what are after all the greatest of adventures, those 
of the spirit and of science. 

And, in admiration of the reckless bravery ind 
the enduring fortitude of those conquerors, one may 
almost forget their cruelty; for others were equally 
cruel, while few were so courageous. 

Quesada led his men thus daringly into the un- 
known; into a land where plants and animals, people 
and language, disease and danger were all strange 
and therefore fearful. He set forth to conquer a 
realm of whose very existence he was ignorant. Yet 
after much pain and the loss of many of his fol- 
lowers he at last reached the plateau where with 
his remaining force of some 166 men and 80 horses 
he overthrew the Chibcha kingdom. 

But on that long struggle from coast to interior, 
the Spaniards had, as they put it, ‘‘died like bugs’’; 
for poisoned arrows and tropical diseases had been 
added to hunger and thirst. 


276 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


It was on the slope of the protecting peaks of 
Monserrate and of Guadalupe that Quesada or- 
dered his newly enslaved Indians to build twelve 
thatched huts, leaving a space in the center for the 
erection of a church; the number of the huts deter- 
mined by the number of the apostles; and the loca- 
tion chosen because of its resemblance to the site 
of Quesada’s early home in Spanish Granada, be- 
cause it would offer easy defense and because of 
abundant water and good air. 

When the huts were finished, it is said that Que- 
sada, at the head of his men, marched solemnly 
three times around his new city, proclaiming it dedi- 
cated to the service of the king. : 

Such was the beginning of my Bogota of the 
mysterious doors. 

In the same year of its founding, just as Quesada 


was making ready to return to Spain for reinforce-- 


ments, there occurred the most dramatic and incred- 
ible coincidence of history. Indians came to him 
with a tale of men coming up from the south; men 
whom they described as like the Spaniards, but with 
finer clothes and fatter horses. Quesada sent his 
brother to investigate, and while he awaited the re- 
sult there came another rumor, this time that men, 
also similar to the Spaniards, were coming from the 
east, but that these men were dressed in skins and 


i a ee 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS ort 


that their horses were even more lean than those of 
Quesada. 

To meet this band Quesada himself rode out at 
the head of his cavalry, with a soldier beating their 
solitary drum and Indians blowing upon conch- 
shells. 

Thus, with all the pomp he could achieve, did 
Quesada meet Federman, the leader of the band 
which approached from Venezuela in the east. 

But so ill, so fever-stricken were the hundred men 
who had survived Federman’s march that they 
moved to tears even the stoic captains who under 
Quesada had made the painful journey from the 
coast, nearly a thousand miles to the plateau, over- 
coming as they advanced, not only the jungle, but 
tribes of hostile resisting Indians. 

In search of food Federman had wandered three 
years about the great marshy llanos. He had seen 
three hundred of his four hundred men die there 
of hunger and fever, until finally in desperation he 
had undertaken to surmount the Andes, scaling 
those grim mountains by a route so difficult that 
it has never since been attempted, so precipitous 
that it had been necessary to haul his horses by 
ropes up the perilous cliffs. 

Meanwhile, just six days before Quesada’s meet- 
ing with this gaunt band from Venezuela, his emis- 


278 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


sary was embracing Belalcazar, head of the expedi- 
tion which had been reported as arriving from the 
south. 

Belalcazar, it appeared, had been living in splen- 
dor as governor of Quito, but an Indian had poured 
into his ears fresh tales of that fabulous city of 
El Dorado, in which all Spaniards then believed, 
and the lure of which none could resist. And so 
Belalcazar had deserted the post which he held un- 
der Pizarro, to go in search of El Dorado. 

As he proceeded he had overcome great territory 
and founded cities. And then he, too, began to hear — 
rumors of people like himself, and of the little settle- 
ment of twelve huts, into which he finally rode, with 
the steel corselets of his men flashing in the sun and 
the plumes of their helmets flaunting as they ad- 
vanced upon their sleek fat horses. 

Thus in the far interior of an unmapped country, 
in an uncharted continent, three exploring conquer- 
ors, none of whom knew of the existence of the 
others, miraculously met; to remain together some 
months feasting and hunting, planning the Bogota 
that was to be, laying out its streets and its squares 
and holding councils concerning their own futures. 
For Belaleazar and Quesada were both ambitious 


to return to Spain and to secure from the crown the _ 


governorships of the territory they had subdued. 





INSCRUTABLE DOORS 279 


To this end they had a boat constructed in which 
they might descend the Magdalena to Cartagena, 
from which port they would set sail for Spain. 
Bogota was busy with their preparations, with the 
sale of their slaves, their guns, and their horses, and 
with the farewell speeches of Quesada, who was ad- 
dicted to rhetoric. And upon their arrival in Carta- 
gena they created a deep sensation. No one had 
ever heard of Bogota or of the Chibcha kingdom, 
and Quesada had been so long gone that all believed 
him dead.- Now wild tales of the riches of the 
interior possessed little Cartagena, and crowds fol- 
lowed the three conquerors about the streets praying 
to enlist under their banners. 

But they sailed away to Spain, there to part for- 
ever, and Quesada to drift for twelve years over 
Kurope before returning to Colombia; for enemies 
at court intriguing against him brought about his 
banishment. _ 

Thus the foundation of twelve huts was left to 
work out its own destiny. A year after its found- 
ing the arrival of six Spanish women is recorded, 
and there is record of the first woman to make a 
loaf of wheat bread in Bogota and of the first wed- 
ding performed in the city. 

With the presence of even a few women society 
becomes immediately more subtle, more complex, 


280 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


more emotional. It is easy, therefore, to imagine 
those elusive changes which soon came about as 
brick houses began to replace those of cane and 
thatch, the Moorish architecture of the south of 
Spain supplanting the round conical-roofed houses 
of the Chibchas. I fancy those six women announ- 
cing, ‘‘ Why, of course you can’t expect us to live like 
this!’ Such and such things must be done, woman 
laying with her inexorable little hands the founda- 
tions of civilization, building her safeguards and at 
the same time all unconsciously forging the chains 
which she was for so many years to hug to herself; 
while men, in the presence of loaves .of wheat bread, 
acquiesced. 

As time went on more women came and more 
men; but there were still not enough women to go 
around, and since some men had wives, all desired 
them. 

Many Spaniards therefore took Indian women; 
often going so far as‘to marry them, for in those 
days royalty was a greater factor than race, and 
expediency, as now, greater than either. The 
daughters of native chiefs and sovereigns were 
eagerly wed, and there began that great fusing of 
Spanish and Indian blood which has created a new 
people. 

Society in Botoga expanded, and slowly the Chris- 


i 


Mong 





LA 


, BOGOTA 


ANTA CLARA 


PeoMURGCH OF S 


2 


4 


aot 





INSCRUTABLE DOORS 281 


tian religion replaced the Chibcha worship of sun 
and moon: and the Chibchas no longer needed to 
buy parrots and macaws from the Magdalena River 
Indians, nor to teach these birds to talk that they 
might later sacrifice them, in the hope of deluding 
their gods into believing that human beings had 
been offered. The Virgin came to be worshiped in- 
stead of the rainbow, and a complex heaven was sub- 
stituted for Elysian fields where every one was to 
have the supreme reward of a garden to cultivate. 

There arrived monks and priests to administer 
this new religion; and new churches and monasteries 
appeared in Bogota. 

Women having demanded civilization, a trail was 
constructed to Honda, where canoe and raft service 
was established on the river, making it possible to 
bring to Bogota the ornaments and luxuries of the 
day; pictures and holy images, great Spanish combs, 
and mantillas, shawls and jewelry, images and pic- 
tures. Three times a year now there was mail 
from Spain, and smallpox also came, along with the 
arts of Kurope. 

To this changed and changing Bogota Quesada 
returned twelve years after its founding; and from 
Bogota he once more set forth for conquest. He 
would find the golden city, the El Dorado, in which 
all still believed. His expedition is a story of tragic 


282 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


failure, and when he struggled back to Bogota he 
was an old man, his strength and his fortune spent. 

With the passing of the years other convents and 
monasteries and churches were erected, churches 
with gorgeous ceilings of red and gold, gilded altars, 
and images. 

Men and women continued to arrive, and many 
children were born in Bogota. 

There was then one last exploit of Quesada. A 
warrior tribe under the leadership of its chief, Yul- 
dama, conceived the idea of revolt, plotting to over- 
throw their conquerors. In this crisis Quesada, now 
seventy-four years old, found himself again at the 
head of a worshiping force, which the brave old man 
headed on horseback; and although he had at times 
to be carried in a hammock, so great was his ex- 
haustion, he nevertheless fell with all the fire of 
his youth upon the Indians. Yuldama was killed, 
and Quesada entered Bogota triumphant, to die six 
years later of leprosy, with all Bogota draped in 
black to do him honor, 

Gradually schools were established, as had been 
governing tribunals, churches, and convents. The 
Jesuits came, and with them the first printing-press. 
The grains and fruits of Europe were cultivated on 
the fertile temperate plains of the plateau, and Bo- 
gota began now to produce artists and musicians 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 283 


and writers. Scientific expeditions went out, and 
volumes began to appear treating of botany, min- 
eralogy, and astronomy, as well as books on theol- 
ogy, books of chronicles and of poetry. 

At frequent intervals throughout the years there 
were earthquakes and epidemics of smallpox. 
These words appear here and there in the chronicles, 
as ‘‘selah’’ occurs from time to time in the Psalms 
of the Old Testament. But Bogota never lost the 
courage of its founder. If there were earthquakes, 
there was at once rebuilding; if there were smallpox, 
more children would replace those who were lost. 

There came then a time when the brave city had 
grown strong enough to resent the disdain and the 
domination of Madrid. A writer of the period thus | 
voiced their resentment: 


But what were the occasions solemnized by our fiestas? When 
a new Viceroy arrived . . . when a prince was born or an infanta 
of Spain married. There was also a pompous and lugubrious 
function upon the death of a member of the royal family. Thus 
all our hopes and pleasures, all our mourning came from the 
other side of the ocean. There was nothing national for us, when 
the very cloth and food marked “from Castile’ were considered 
superior. From there we had also our viceroys, our judges, our 
ecclesiastics, and our soldiers, as well as our indulgences, our 
sacred relics, and even the salvation of our souls. Poor colonists! 
We had nothing, not so much as the sentiment of patriotism! 


The war for independence was therefore destined. 
Spanish South America felt itself to have outgrown 
the parent country, and resistance followed upon 
resentment. 


284 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Revolutionists organized and attacked; and were 
by turns victorious and defeated, and again vic- 
torious. Patriots were marched this way and that; 
to be shot in the plaza of Bolivar and in the little 
park of Santander. Bolivar himself passed in the 
delirious joy of triumph, with flowers showered 
from the balconies; and, in the glory of the homage - 
he so loved, he could happily not have foreseen that 
by a certain window he would one day escape 
assassins. 


All this had come and gone in Bogota, where in 
the high cold twilight men now played chess 
under melancholy evergreens, while street-cars slid 
harshly over metal rails, and here and there electric 
lights flashed readiness for the night. The horn of 
a motor screeched as the machine drew up before 
the largest private aérial post-office in the world. 
But the doors with their waiting knockers remained 
inscrutable; and I was still a stranger in Bogota. 


We had letters of introduction which would open 
some of those doors, but I hesitated. I wanted as 
always to arrive at an independent impression, be- 
fore being shown what to see. 

There was the life of street and of market, to 
absorb which, one must be at once dreamily recep- 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 285 


tive and searchingly observant, a frame of mind in- 
compatible with society. 

Thus for days I filled the intervals of roaming 
about the streets, with gazing out of the hotel win- 
dows. 

The windows faced south on Calle 10, and oppo- 
site was the church of San Ignacio de Loyola. Shiv- 
ering in the half-light of cold dawn I would watch 
people stream out of the church, while bells sum- 
moned others to a second mass. 

On the feet of that congregation there were few 
shoes; it was by sheer numbers that the beat of 
hemp sandals on the pavement annihilated sleep. 
People poured silently out of the church, with only 
the sound of many feet; that and an occasional 
cough, for it had been cold kneeling in the damp 
dawn on a stone floor. Most of the congregations 
were Indians; the men in ponchos and the women 
huddled in inadequate shawls; children duplicating 
in miniature the costume of their parents. But there 
were also women of cholo, mestizo, and Spanish 
castes; women whose feet were shod in shoes and 
about whose heads were pinned closely the shroud- 
ing black mantas which so effectually obliterate 
caste lines, making all for the moment equal in the 
sight of God. 

Later the candle shop across the way opened 


286 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


its wide doors as if to admit the street, and thus 
exhibited rows upon rows of white candles, great 
and small; with rows also of little wax models of 
hands and arms and legs, to be left with prayers 
before altars. 

Next to the candle shop was an establishment 
furnishing Bogoté with hearses and coaches, and 
sometimes the day began with a hearse and some- 
times with a bridal coach. Drooping black plumes 
were dusted and a silver cross screwed into 
the top of that final vehicle, or the bride’s coach was 
festooned with tiny white bows, while footmen and 
coachmen strutted about in tall glossy hats, white 
trousers, high black boots and long-tailed black 
coats, with white carnations in their buttonholes. 

And these things which I watched from the win- 
dow, masses and funerals, weddings and candles, 
were all links with the life that went on behind the 
doors. 

So also was the market to which are sent the ° 
servants who know life as it is lived behind the doors 
of Bogota, servants sent to shop for their mistresses, 
since no elegant and refined person may go to 
market. 

The market is instructive, with its combined prod- 
ucts of fertile plateau and luxurious tropical val- 
leys; strange and delicious fruits of distant equa- 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 287 


torial suns, side by side with peaches and cherries 
and grapes and strawberries; side by side as though 
there were no such thing as seasons or climates. 

There are lines of blazing: flower-stalls where 
tropic flowers fraternize with temperate. Never 
were there such roses and camellias, such hibiscuses 
and carnations; and never were pansies and gladioli 
so vivid and so large; as though the earth had said, 
‘‘See the beauty which I can bring forth.”’ 

There are stalls which display the every-day 
needs of the simple life of an Andean city; stalls of 
the decorative straw mats which serve as beds; 
stalls of hemp sandals, of baskets and bags, of 
native-woven ponchos and blankets, of wooden uten- 
sils and pottery; and stalls piled high with bolts of 
crudely bright calico. 

The market is busy, crowded, and courteous. With 
many ‘‘perdons’’ and ‘‘permisos,’’ bare and san- 
daled feet make their slippery way over the mud 
floor, in and out among the stalls. 

A man with two parrakeets and a wheezy little 
organ announces that for a penny the birds will tell 
your fortune. At his command they cease climbing 
wrong side up about their cage, and both appear 
eager to select from a box of folded salmon papers 
the one which will be your fortune. The salmon 
papers are labeled ‘‘The Sacred Heart of Jesus,’’ 


288 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


and there is a picture of Christ displaying the heart, 
while inside the pink slip is printed your fate; 


The oracle promises that you will vanquish your enemies... 
that you are soon to receive an unexpected legacy . . . that before 
you know it you will be possessed of great dominions . . . that 
you have borne heavy burdens, but that now colossal luck waits 
at your door ... and that in the lottery you will be fortunate 
in the numbers 1234 to 1245. 


And there is a strange pair which attracts curious 
crowds: a native Indian, short and thick-set, as are 
most of the surviving South American tribes; and 
a zambo, part Indian and part negro, a tall, power- 
fully built man with the negroid traits predominat- 
ing. He is proclaiming in a singsong monologue 
that he speaks for ‘‘this indigenous one’’ who has 
come up from his home on the Goajira Peninsula, 
in order to give the citizens of Bogota an oppor- 
tunity to purchase those wonderful remedies which ~ 
it is well known are the secret discoveries of his 
people. There is in particular a pomade ... quite 
miraculous in cases of rheumatism... . | 

Meanwhile the ‘‘indigenous one’’ is smoking a 
huge cigar and spitting recklessly and profusely, 
his black-stained face utterly expressionless. 

In all this, Bogota is not greatly different from 
other South American markets. ‘The Indians of 
the Colombian plateau are less colorful and dis- 
tinctive than those of the EHeuadorian Andes; and 












THE SUBURB OF EGIPTO 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 289 


in Colombia one misses the disdainful llamas which 
in Ecuador condescend to act as beasts of burden. 
Otherwise these Andean markets are much the same. 

But in Bogota, alone of all the world, does one 
find poetry sold side by side with poultry. Little 
boys stroll about offering for a few pennies small 
paper-bound collections of what they so prettily call 
poesias; and cheaper still are verses printed on sin- 
gle slips, printed often in red. 

In the markets of Bogota there is an excellent sale 
for poesias. Frequently the purchaser cannot read, 
and the small salesman must read aloud from his 
collection that his customer may make a choice. 
And always a crowd gathers to listen. 

I follow these children, buying whenever possible 
duplicates of the poems selected by the barefoot 
half-breeds of Bogota’s market. 

A sweet-faced, gentle-eyed chola woman is sitting 
on a box, her black shawl slipped back from her 
shiny dark head and wrapped about the tiny baby 
in her arms. She is looking over an assortment of 
verses; hesitating ... and finally selecting ‘‘Good-by 
to my mother,’’ printed in red on a single strip. 

A bare-legged girl in short tattered garments 
considers the poems, while at her feet a rabbit, 
seated on the ground, is making the neatest of toi- 
lets: very scrupulous and leisurely as though he 


290 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


had all eternity before him, instead of facing the 
strong probability of being converted into stew be- 
fore the day was done. 

The girl considers. There are poems upon ‘‘Pov- 
erty’’ and ‘‘Marriage among the Poor’’; upon the 
eyes of a loved one; upon the soldier who promises 
that on a morrow which is never to be for him he 
will return to the window of his love; and there are 
poems celebrating the devotion of parents and chil- 
dren, poems to the dead, and one to a blind musician 
who sits with his guitar by the wayside. | 

But it is a poem inscribed ‘‘To the Little Laun- 
dress’’ for which the barefoot girl finally exchanges 
her penny ; to a ‘‘Lovely Little Laundress, with eyes 
as fair as the sun, and a soul as blue as the skies; 
a Little Laundress who sings while she scrubs .. . 
Listen to me, Little Laundress, and tell me why 
you are so happy and. why you sing as you 
scrub? ...”’ 


The pretty chambermaid at the hotel one day vol- 
unteered the information that if we wished to buy 
old pictures and antiques she could direct us to what 
she called a comisionista. We were to proceed up 
Calle 10 in the direction of Egipto, past the theater 
on one side and a small shop on the other. The shop 
would display a sign offering ‘‘early breakfasts and 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 291 


eleven o’clocks. ... But that is not the one.... Far- 
ther along there is another, and it is next to that 
that you will find the house of. Andrea who is 
comisiomsta.’’ 

The directions seemed vague, for all Bogota is 
sprinkled with signs announcing ‘‘early breakfasts 
and eleven o’clocks.’’ But proceeding up Calle 10, 
we arrived without difficulty at the house of Andrea. 

It was the sort of house whose door cannot afford 
to be inscrutable, since it must stand open to admit 
light to the windowless interior. To secure limited 
privacy, a great old-fashioned wardrobe had been 
placed across the entrance; the wardrobe opening 
on the street, for otherwise its contents would have 
been lost in the semi-darkness of the room. 

From behind that wardrobe Andrea appeared, an 
elderly little woman with an Indian complexion, a 
blind eye, and a patient expression. She fetched 
dilapidated Spanish chairs and then, producing a 
key, opened the ponderous wardrobe and took out 
a small black leather bag, again closing and locking 
the wardrobe. A purple velvet case inside the bag 
contained a rosary of carved gold beads; in a little 
box was an emerald ring and a necklace of tiny 
pearls, Colombian pearls from the peninsula of 
Goajira. But her stock was low, Andrea lamented. 
She kept repeating that there was not much, not 


292 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


much. ... But she would take us to the house of a 
sehora where we might see more. ... It was, how- 
ever, far... if ‘‘meester’’ would call a coach 

Curious urchins, who had paused in their crying 
of lottery-tickets in order to investigate what we 
did in the house of Andrea, ran off to the plaza to 
hail a coach, while behind the wardrobe Andrea 
donned an enveloping black manta. It all happened 
so quickly that in a moment the cloud of urchins 
had again taken up the cry of how lucky were the 
numbers they offered, and we were jouncing and 
bouncing over cobbles; the driver instructed by 
Andrea to turn here and proceed there, and finally 
to halt before one of the inscrutable doors which, 
however, opened at once at the knock of Andrea. ' 

To the street this house presented the somber 
aspect of an abode sealed against the world. But 
with the opening of the door we stepped into a 
lovely patio, where orange-trees were fragrant with 
blossom and golden with fruit, where there were 
great bushes of creamy tea-roses, of white roses and 
pink roses, while hung from the columns of the 
corridor were baskets of flaming geraniums. From 
this flowery gallery opened large bright bedrooms 
and a stiffly ornate drawing-room. 

The street had shown the usual staring white 
walls, with, high above the sidewalk, one or two 








THE HOUSE Of THE MARQUIS OF SAN JORGE 





INSCRUTABLE DOORS 293 


little closed windows and in the center an expres- 
sionless door with a knocker-hand. Within was 
space and life. There was even from the patio a 
view, out over warm red roofs to the church on the 
peak of Monserrate. 

It was an old house. The sefiora had lived there 
all her life; her four daughters had been born there. 
They spoke with an air of permanence, as though 
nothing but earthquake ever shook these hidden 
homes of Bogotd, where funerals followed christen- 
ings in the cycle of generations, and where women, 
shut up with the stark facts of life, turned to the 
church for romance. 

The antiquities assembled for our inspection con- 
sisted of an ancient work-box; a little shrine inside 
which was an image of the Virgen del Campo; a 
few pictures; and a side-saddle, heavy, carved, and 
embossed, dating from the days when great ladies 
had on mule-back covered the weary mountains 
which separate the capital from Honda on the river. 

When the door of this house closed behind us, 
the wall with its blind windows seemed to deny the 
existence of orange-trees and of women eager to dis- 
cuss their lives and yours. 

And, again we lurched over pavements, to be 
stopped by Andrea before another door, with an- 
other waiting knocker. 


294 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


It was a dark heavy door with on each side mean 
little shops on the street, above which were balconied 
windows inclosed in glass and ornamented with 
diagonals of green, yellow, and red, back of which 
wooden blinds were tightly closed. 

Standing before the door, it was impossible to 
guess what waited within. But when it finally 
opened to Andrea’s knock, there was revealed no 
blaze of blossoms. There was only a flight of stairs 
leading up from the neglected patio to a withered 
little lady, like a pressed flower preserved from 
colonial days. 

When she came forward into the light her face 
showed so deathly a pallor under its powder that 
she might have been a ghost summoned by Andrea; 
and Andrea herself, with the black manta drawn 
over her head and about her old face, might have 
been a go-between among spirits rather than a 
commission agent in twentieth-century Bogota. 

In the lady’s pallid face were sunk dark dim eyes, 
and one of her slender arms was gloved to the 
elbow in white silk; the hand, she explained, 
was ill. 

After whispered talk with Andrea this white lady 
tremblingly opened a door, letting us into a room 
where paintings in gold frames lined walls hung 
with embroidered silks of soft lovely hues; a room 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 295 


crowded with treasures of church and of palace. 
There were high-backed chairs with heavy embossed 
leather and carved arms, and chairs with backs of 
gold embroidery and arms inlaid with mother-of- 
pearl. In a writing-desk of Empire design were 
pieces of colonial silver; plates and platters of in- 
credible weight and exquisitely severe form. There 
was a four-poster bed with ornamental head- and 
foot-pieces, red, gorgeously decorated in gold; with 
a piece of gold brocade laid across the bed and upon 
the brocade a book three feet square, bearing in 
gilt letters the name of Vasques. And there were 
ever so many elaborately inlaid tables and fragments 
of ecclesiastical gold cornices. 


Everywhere was a splendor beyond the most ex- 


travagant dreams of those first six Spanish women 
who, four hundred years ago, had arrived at the 
thatched village of twelve huts, their heads full of 
all sorts of ambitious schemes. _ 

‘‘Tt was my brother’s room,’’ the withered little 
lady was saying; and, turning to look at her, I real- 
ized that she had been beautiful with finely delicate 
features, beautiful with a fragile languorous beauty. 
‘‘Tt was my brother’s room,’’ she repeated. ‘‘Here 
is the photograph of my brother. He died in this 
room... in that bed....’’ Her deep fading eyes 
dwelt upon the gold glitter of the bed where lay 


296 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


the volume labeled ‘‘Vasques.’’? And I knew that 
she saw lying there the brother, and not the book. 

‘‘It was in the year one thousand nine hundred 
and seventeen that he died ... in that bed.”’ 

In a swiftly fleeting instant I seemed to see what 
she saw; a dark, heavily mustached man lying quite, 
quite still; indifferent to the pictures and chairs 
and tables which surrounded him; unaware even 
of the priest coming to perform those last holy 
rites; the Host entering, with the light of the open 
door glinting on the silver cross. 

The scene flashed clear and detailed, and then 
vanished as the lady’s eyes shifted from the bed 
to rest puzzled upon two strangers in the room. 

We asked about the paintings and the furniture, 
but we got no further than that they had belonged 
to her brother who had died in the bed. And then 
there entered the great-niece; a girl as surprising 
as the room, so far did she seem removed from it 
in her short cloth skirt and simple white blouse, with 
her feet in the stubby-toed brown Oxfords of the 
most modern college girl. 

The characteristic phrase of Bogoté is ‘‘Por 
supuesto,’’ as “‘Como no?’’ is indispensable in the 
conversation of the West Coast; the Bogotanian 
saying, ‘‘Of course’’ to everything, where the West 
Coast remarks, ‘‘Why not?”’ | 





INSCRUTABLE DOORS 297 


And with this ‘‘Of course’”’ the gray-eyed girl 
with the stubby shoes began. 

Por supuesto, it was a pleasure to have us see the 
things. Her great-uncle had been so devoted to 
them. He lived all his life in the room, living among 
his treasures. You see he was a bachelor. With 
each new addition to his collection he used to say 
that he had a honeymoon. 

The chairs? ... Oh, the chairs had once belonged 
to a viceroy. The bed also; and the desk... that 
had been Bolivar’s; brought all the way from 
France, up the Magdalena by boat and over the 
Andes on mules. The carpet had been woven by 
nuns of the order of Ensefianza. There was the 
name of the convent woven across the center in 
great isolated letters, in the midst of convention- 
alized birds. A few of the paintings were Spanish. 
There was a big one by Ribera, but most of them 
were the work of Colombians, and many were by 
Vasques. We might look at the book on the bed. 
Tt was filled with the original sketches which Vas- 
ques had made for his pictures, Vasques who was 
Colombia’s most famous artist. 

Her great-uncle had collected all these things; 
he had indeed been very devoted. 

She seemed so young, this girl with her crow- 
black hair and her strange blue-gray eyes, so young 


298 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


to be shut up there with the departed glory of colo- 
nial Bogota and “the old great-aunt with the sick 
hand, who murmured about a brother who had 
chedheiwsi | 
Huddled in her manta, Andrea had been sitting 
outside the door, contributing no information; and 
as it seemed impossible that these treasures were 
for sale, and unfeeling even to suggest it, we found 
ourselves saying good-by without ever having 
broached the subject of purchase. 

**Por supuesto,’ smiled the girl, ‘‘it had been a 
pleasure... .’’ 

Thus surprisingly, through Andrea, comisionista, 
had the doors opened. 


We went one sunny morning to photograph the 
exterior of the house of the Marquis of San Jorge, 
and when the picture was taken we lingered, pos- 
sessed with the desire to see what lay beyond the 
door. Running about with Andrea had made us 
bold; we would lift that brass hand and see what 
happened. 

As the iron-studded door was ponderous, so was 
the more than life-sized hand which held between 
its thumb and forefinger a brass apple; and even 
had the door not been so provocative, the apple 
would of course have tempted. 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 299 


And so we raised and let:fall the hand. In a 
moment the door swung slowly, an enormously 
heavy door, with, inside, a great iron bolt which 
had worn a deep groove in the wall against which 
it struck when opened. Within was an entrance- 
_ hall between the outer and the inner door, which 
was also strong with a heavy bolt. 

The Marquis of San Jorge had defended well 
his house; yet it had not been powerful enough 
to save him from imprisonment and death at the 
hands of Royalists who in their determination to 
put down the Revolution spared not even the noblest 
of the patriots. 

We passed through the doors into an arched 
colonnade which surrounds the flagged patio where 
among camellias and roses an Andean white throat 
trilled as gaily as though a brave marquis had 
not gone out of the house to give his life for the 
freedom of Colombia. But then it was all very 
long ago, and to a little whitethroat there is only 
the sunshine of to-day. 

We were interested in the marquis? ... Then the 
present mistress of the house would be delighted 
to show us about. Up the wide staircase she con- 
ducted us over floors sagging with age; into long 
lofty drawing-rooms where parents, grandparents, 
and great-grandparents looked out from mellow 


300 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


portraits; mellow as though something had softened 
once haughty spirits, as though when alone they 
might even smile a little tenderly at the tragic 
intensity of the living. 

We were shown the secret passage behind the 
gold and white partition on the landing, and the 
chapel at the end of the gallery where before a 
marble altar, under a gilded ceiling, the feudal 
lord of the mansion had once summoned his house- 
hold to worship; before he had gone out to die. | 

And while the quaint little lady of the black gown 
and the smooth gray hair escorted us from room 
to room, she confided her own uneventful history: 

Her parents were dead, and she and her sister 
lived there alone. Wasn’t it absurd? .. . two little 
old ladies in such a big house! .. . But on Sundays 
they dined brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, 
with their husbands and wives and children. The 
great dining-room was none too large on Sundays. 

There were views over the city which she would 
have us see, and there was the conservatory and 
the servants’ quarters, an establishment in itself, 
with a patio cultivated as a vegetable garden. 
And we must meet her sister who in a small sitting- 
room sat entertaining an aged padre who made a 
morning call, 

Then Quaint Little Lady No. 1 had to impart to 





ROBES OF HUMILITY 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 301 


her quaint little duplicate the answers to all the 
questions she had been asking me: when had we 
arrived and how long were we remaining; whether 
we liked Bogota; at what hotel were we stopping; 
did they take good care of us, and did we like the 
food? And was our own country pretty, like Bogota? 

When all this had been repeated, the second of the 
dainty fluttering ladies had her own questions. 

Where did our windows look? . . . Oh, then we 
were opposite the church of San Ignacio. What 
was my favorite church in Bogota, and why? Did 
we like the cemetery? 

Yes, we had seen the tomb of Quesada with the 
inscription which he had himself composed: ‘‘I be- 
lieve in the resurrection of the dead.”’ 

And then the old padre must ask whether we 
knew his church, which was the little church of 
San Diego, celebrated for its poverty, its humility, 
and its penances. We must visit him, and he would 
show us the wonderful Virgin, cut from stone by 
angels. She was a marvelously miraculous Vir- 
And the little sisters chirped that she was ‘‘prodi- 
gious.’? The padre had twelve lovely dresses for 
her... of embroidered silk. 

The padre’s own robe admitted an age of thirty 
years, and the varying black of its rusty patches 


802 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


testified to the fact, as well as to how truly he 
observed the poverty of San Diego. 

Talking to this saintly padre and to the two 
little twittering bombazine ladies, one might almost 
forget that sense of imminent change which per- 
meates Colombia, and which has not yet crossed 
the threshold of the house of the Marquis of San 
Jorge. 


Of all the enigmatic doors of Bogota none are so 
baffling ‘as those which shut in the cloistered nuns. | 
In a certain calle there is a low white building which 
turns a blind face to the street. Above the door, 
across the blank whitewashed wall, in vague black 
letters, spaced far apart, are the words 


LA CONCEPCION 


A door giving upon the street opens into a vesti- 
bule, where, beside the main door, there is let into 
the wall a small revolving wicket of solid wooden 
panels. ; 

I see a priest enter and for a moment converse 
with some one behind the wicket. | 

When he goes away I take his place. ‘‘Is it pos- 
sible,’’ I ask, ‘‘for a sehora from North America to 
visit the convent?’’ | 

From behind the tantalizing wicket a voice of bird- 





INSCRUTABLE DOORS 303 


like sweetness inquires whether the lady is thinking 
of becoming anun. And I am forced to confess that 
I wish only to visit the convent. 

‘‘But, sefiora, we are very cloistered. It is not 
permitted to visit us.’’ The voice is amused. It 
asks the name of this droll person who thinks she 
can visit cloistered nuns. And then because of the 
very enormity of the idea the voice decides that 
it will go and ask ‘‘Reverend Mother.’’ It goes 
away, for when I speak there is no answer. 

While I stand thus waiting before the dumbly un- 
responsive wicket, ragamuffins who have gathered 
in the doorway swarm about me begging for ‘‘little 
cents.’’ | 

Then the voice comes back. ‘‘Reverend Mother 
is sorry, but it is not in her power to give the per- 
mission. ... And I am to tell you that there is really 
nothing to see. Our beautiful convent was long 
ago taken from us. This is only a private house 
generously given over to our use.”’ 

‘“‘But it is not the convent, but you, that I want 
to see!’’ 

I persist, for I have fallen in love with the radi- 
ance of the voice. 

‘¢Ah, sefiora. I may not see you here, but...’ 
triumphantly, ‘‘but I shall meet you in the sky!’’ 

‘¢Tell me what you do all day?’’ I question. I do 


] 


304 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


not need to ask if she is happy; the voice which is 
like a song has told me that. 

‘‘We pray and we embroider. We embroider 
vestments and altar-cloths while Reverend Mother 
reads to us from sacred books.’’ 

‘‘And how long have you been here ... in this 
convent ?”’ 

‘‘More than twenty years. I entered when I was 
eighteen. .. .’’ ie 

Nearly forty years old ... twenty years shut 
away from the poignant beauty of the world... yet 
with the voice of a joyful child! 

The ragamuffins renew their chorus of ‘‘centa- 
vito,’’ and the voice becomes a laugh, running up 
and down a sweet merry scale. 

‘‘Somehow I can’t bear to leave you.’’ I find 
myself turning the wicket, as though vainly hoping 
that it might by some accident reveal the face of 
the voice. I am reluctant to go away into freedom, 
leaving her behind revolving wooden panels which, 
no matter how you turn them, forever shut her into 
the life of the cloister. 

‘‘But I am happy, my friend, and I shall meet 
you... in the sky.’’ 

And she adds that her name is Mercedes, as 
though I might need it when it came to asking for 
her there. 





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OR om ee aS 


Sh he Th i te dy te 
ka ae Ss aoa 


THROUGH THE COLONNADE OF THE CAPITOL 


si 





ao ener 


INSCRUTABLE DOORS 305 


When I move away, the center of a begging bevy, 
I feel that I am no longer a stranger in Bogota. 


It was then possible to present credentials without 
fear of imperiling the spontaneous and unprejudiced 
impressions of discovery; to let luncheons and teas 
interrupt happy idling in the markets and intrude 
upon dreaming in the Park of Santander, where 
students walk up and down under the evergreens, 
studying aloud, their presence attracting flocks of 
bootblacks, the diversion of whose conversation 
tempts to unnecessary ‘‘shines’’; and where on 
Mondays the lottery numbers, after being whirled 
in a wire cage, are dropped one by one into a basket 
and held up that all may note for themselves the 
winning figures. 

We began now to see aristocratic Bogota at home, 
and no society could be more gracious or more 
cultivated. We drank champagne from silver gob- 
lets. We made friends with children as elaborate 
as costly French dolls. The roses of Bogota blos- 
somed in their cheeks, for children and flowers 
bloom vividly in the climate of the plateau. 

We had tea in a beautiful stately home where 
calla-lilies stood about in tall crystal vases; where 
there was a private ball-room and where in the 
long drawing-room there was actually a tiny coal 


306 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


fire burning in one of the four fireplaces of chilly 
Bogota. 

It was from one of our charming hostesses that 
I learned the story of the President whose resig- 
nation had been forced by the quiet power of public 
opinion. The President had accepted a loan of 
twenty-five thousand dollars from an official of one 
of the foreign companies conducting business in 
Colombia. The loan had been negotiated, she said, 
in a perfectly frank and businesslike manner. The 
President had not been suspected of corruption; but 
public opinion, seeing the danger of such loans, was 
none the less forceful, for the absence of violence. 
The President had at once resigned, hues dignity 
and without scandal. 

The sefora who told me the story was justly 
proud of such a refutation of the popular myth of 
South American government by revolution. 

We looked not only upon this delightful Colom- 
bian hospitality, but we had also a glimpse of the 
foreign colony of that far-off capital. The American 
legation included us in the warmth of its fatherly 
hospitality, and there, around another of the four 
fireplaces, we listened to golfing and country-club 
talk; to discussion of the eighteen-hole course near 
the suburb of Chapinero as compared with other 
courses .. . in Quito, La Paz, Buenos Ayres. 





INSCRUTABLE DOORS 307 


In such a foreign colony there were many who 
escaped from Mexico in the days when ‘‘it was the 
open season for killing gringos.’’ And there was 
mining talk and railroad talk and oil talk; talk of 
drilling and seepage and veins; of territory where 
a population of one million eight hundred thousand 
thickly settled agricultural people have with the out- 
side world no connection by rail or steamer; still 
as dependent upon caravans of mules as in the days 
before steam or motor. 

Wherever the gringo is, there is this insistence 
upon change, upon development and progress; illus- 
trated by tales of men who had made millions in 
an hour, tales as fantastic as those of Kl Dorado 
which four centuries ago lured the Spaniards. 

At the Anglo-American Club we danced one after- 
noon to an orchestra which strove to be jazzy. And, 
in the aloofness of the foreigner, inscrutable 
doors with waiting hands and a market where little 
boys sold poetry to laundresses seemed equally 
unreal. 

When the door of this club closed upon syncopa- 
tion we found ourselves once more in the Plaza 
Bolivar. It had been raining, and electric lights, 
dear to the vassals of progress, were reflected in 
a luminous blur on the pavement. 

Across the plaza proceeded a silver cross held 


308 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


high, an acolyte ringing a bell, and a priest in white 
lace tunic, followed by a group of men in black. 

The Host passed on its way to the dying, and with 
its passing all fell upon their knees; coachmen in 
waiting vehicles, passengers in the _ street-car 
brought to a sudden halt, pedestrians, men and 
women, even the little lottery-venders, all fell upon 
their knees on the dark wet pavement. 





al 





THE ROAD TO TEQUENDAMA 


CHAPTER XVII 
THE HIGH PLATEAU 


Ki awaited the oxen which were to take us 

to the falls of Tequendama, sitting, while 
we waited, outside the station of El Charquito at 
the end of a spur which the southern railway of the 
plateau sends out to serve the coal-mines of that 
region, 7 

We had our lunch in a basket; the day was still 
a mere infant; and we were to visit Tequendama. 
So there was joy in our hearts. 

A railroad engineer, who had scraped acquaint- 
ance with us on the way down, sat and talked, the 
conversation obviously turning upon the carts of 
coal which, at the unwilling behest of oxen, climbed 
the hill, to be emptied into waiting freight-cars. 

The men who did the shoveling earned sixty cents 
a day. Off the line you could get laborers for from 
ten to thirty cents. In fact the further you pene- 
trated the interior the lower were wages and the 
cheaper was life. 

The coal was mined almost anywhere in the hills 


about us; all you had to do was to scratch the sur- 
309 


310 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


face, and there was coal. But of what use was it 
when the cost of transportation to the coast was 
so great? That was why the mining was carried 
on in primitive and desultory fashion, simply to 
supply enough for local needs. 

This subject of isolation led to the ever-present 
topic of the development of Colombia. 

Traveling about the United States at a time when 
the great transcontinental railroads were planned 
and built must have been much like traveling through 
Colombia at this stage of its evolution. There would 
have been in the air the same stir of unrest, the 
same discussion of visions in which few believed 
until they took actual physical form before their 
eyes. 

Talk of development naturally suggested the ex- 
penditure of the twenty-five million dollars which 
the United States was then paying Colombia in 
settlement of the Canal Zone claims. 

‘‘When Congress voted that money,’’ the engineer 
said, ‘‘Colombia was all of a sudden overrun with 
every sort of promoter, and every sort of crook, 
too. They came down like geese from the frozen 
north, and each one of ’em had his own pet idea 
about how Colombia ought to spend the money.”’ 

In that matter of the canal, the Colombians seem 
to have buried the hatchet in conclusive fashion, 


Cg Ah he ee ee ee 


Pas, 
) ete ee 


| 
| 
| 





THE HIGH PLATEAU ~ 311 


for we heard nowhere any post-mortems, all dis- 
cussion being’ confined to constructive argument 
concerning the expenditure of the compensation. 

And believing that hatchets should not be ex- 
humed, I can see no point in reopening a dispute 
now happily settled, a dispute which can only re- 
solve itself into the question of whether the end 
ever justifies the means. 

Thus while we waited at El Charquito we were 
concerned with the future rather than with the past. 
But when we finally jolted off in a two-wheeled cart 
we became part of a universe of oxen, quite as 
though there were no such thing as future or de- 
velopment. : 

Oxen were coming and going over the winding 
road; often two pairs yoked to a single cart; red 
oxen and white oxen twisting up branching roads 
to the entrances of many little coal-mines, and back 
again with loaded carts to the road. 

We bumped along in the high, sweet mountain air, 
marveling at the skill with which our driver guided 
us between the coming and going of the coal-carts, 
to this side or that of the protruding loads of mules, 
up and down hill and around sharp curves; steering 
us with the nicety of a chauffeur, although this our 
driver was only a small boy who, like the other 
drivers, marched nonchalantly ahead; guiding us 


312 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


with a long pole like a fishing-rod, one end of which 
he carried on his left shoulder, while the other, 
provided with a steel spur, rested in one of two 
notches spaced three inches apart in the center of 
the yoke. | 

It was merely by the shifting of the pole from 
one of these notches to the other that the animals 
were directed and the cart dexterously maneuvered 
in and out of the confused traffic; a method entirely 
different from that of the coast, where rope reins 
serve to guide the ox-carts of the banana plantations. 

When it was necessary to make our steeds back, 
the small driver would dance in front of them, utter- 
ing alarming imprecations, beating upon the ground 
with his pole until its spur jingled, or again using 
the pole with all the mystic gesticulation of a drum- 
major with a baton. 

Such was our progress to Tequendama; along the 
highway which follows the course of the river 
Bogota as it hurries to its great adventure, flowing 
companionably beside the road, and then all at once 
disappearing ... ceasing to be. The road has sud- 
denly narrowed to a trail which twists about the 
face of wooded hills, but the river . . . the river has 
amazingly vanished! 

The small driver halts his oxen. ‘‘Here,’’ he 
says, ‘‘is the Salto de Tequendama.’’ 





THE HIGH PLATEAU 313 


The wooden rattling of our cart ceases; the driv- 
er’s pole is placed with one end on the ground and 
the other in a notch of the yoke. A step forward 
or back on the part of the oxen would dislodge the 
pole; but it never occurs to them to take it. When 
the symbol of authority is thus left resting against 
the yoke, they will stand patiently for an unlimited 
number of hours. Neglect to leave this trumpery 
emblem, and away your oxen will go in your absence. 

Having thus secured his beasts, our driver leads 
the way to the spot a few hundred feet below, where 
the river so surprisingly disappears. And, as we 
hurry down, I find myself translating his Salto de 
Tequendama, realizing then that the Colombians do 
not speak of Falls, but of a Leap, a Jump; as though 
they would imply daring intention on the part of 
their rivers. 

Eagerly we hasten after our master of oxen, who 
since that one remark has been silent; but the cool 
rushing roar which seems bewilderingly to come 
from every direction says all that needs to be said, 
for the roar is the voice of Tequendama. 

And when we suddenly halt, it is because we find 
ourselves on the brink of that wild Jump, that mad 
leap which the river Bogota has made and which 
is known geographically as the ‘‘famous Falls of 
Tequendama.”’ 


314 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES | 


We stand awed upon the brink, looking down into 
a great oval gorge which narrows sharply at its 
bottom, five hundred feet below us. On the right, 
the gray-blue cliff of the gorge is hung with vines 
and studded with tiny yellow blossoms which grow 
close to the gray rock. On the left, the cliff of 
the gorge is rose and buff. 

Into this lovely chasm the river has hurled itself, 
to flow far below us, down the length of the gorge, 
and out between the high narrow opening at the 
opposite end, through which show the distant hills 
of the hot country, where the river Bogota will join 
the Magdalena. 

We follow the trail around the brink of the cafion 
to a point where we may look across to the falls, 
upon which we have been giddily gazing down. 

In the unimpeded view we see the dark green of 
forested hills hills rising above the silver of a flow- 
ing river, which leaps into a spacious flowering 
chasm. We see that the water strikes first a nar- 
row rock shelf, about six feet below the top; and 
that with the force of the collision it is shattered 
into rockets of spray; the rockets then striking a 
second shelf, ten feet below the first, from which 
the drop is sheer and unbroken to the far bottom, 
to which the water now dashes in point-lace spray. 

And while we gaze enthralled, drifting wisps of 


THE HIGH PLATEAU 315 


blue mist slowly fill the gorge, obliterating almost 
imperceptibly the river... the Falls... the vivid 
cliffs ... and, at last, even the surrounding hills; 
a wet mist creeping in, cold mountain mist, like the 
mist which drifts over the Himalayas, on the trail 
to Phalut. | 

As the river disappeared, so now all has vanished, 
but out of the great blue haze there comes the vast 
astonished gasp of the Jump of Tequendama. 


Upon another day we traveled north over that 
plateau of Bogota, which the Colombians call the 
Sabana, and which is three hundred miles long, 
fifty wide, and nearly nine thousand feet above the 
sea; a great fertile green plateau, where in spite 
of the somewhat mythical division of the year into 
autumn and spring rains, winter and summer 
drouths, there seems in reality to be more or less 
rain throughout the twelve months; quite unlike 
the north coast whose seasons are more sharply 
defined. 

Because of its intermittent rain, this plateau is 
green; and because it is fertile and temperate it is 
populous and prosperous. 

We traveled to the end of the Ferrocarril del 
Norte, thirty-eight miles north over the plateau, 
passing through an agricultural country of waving 


316 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


fields of wheat and barley and corn, green fields 
inclosed by gray adobe walls. 

Gray adobe walls also surround adobe houses, 
gray under their heavy-peaked crowns of thatch, 
through which seeps the smoke of household fires. 
Turf tops the walls, and wild flowers powder the 
turf with gold. At intervals in the walls are orna- 
mental gateways roofed with dull red tile; some- 
times these tiles replace the turf on the walls, and 
tile-roofed also are the frequent villages. Sheep 
and cattle and horses roam the pastures; willows 
weep over the streams; and here again is the river 
Bogota, flowing placidly between a double avenue 
of eucalyptus-trees drawn like a dark strong line 
across the landscape, the river flowing placidly 
south to take its great leap at Tequendama. 

We followed this road to its end at Nemocon, 
where the mountains again close in: but at Zipa- 
quira we stopped off to visit the ancient salt-mines. 


Zipaquira is almost entirely an Indian village. 
Indians kneel devoutly in the great white church 
with its double towers, and Indian women with 
dark shawls over their heads come with water-jars 
to the fountain in the plaza. 

As the spouts of the fountain are placed high, 
the women fill their jars by means of long hollow 


THE PLAZA OF 





AN ANDEAN VILLAGE 








THE HIGH PLATEAU 317 


bamboo sticks, to one end of which sections of cattle- 
horns have been attached; when the horn end is 
slipped over the spout, the water is conducted 
through the bamboo pipe down to the mouth of 
the jar. 

But although women were thus gathered about 
the fountain, we found Zipaquira quiet, quiet as an 
Andean village is quiet when it is not market day. 
It was not only still, but it lacked the color of a 
similar Ecuadorian village; for the Indians of Co- 
lombia are somber in their dark garments and their 
dingy Panama hats. Unlike the aborigines of Ecua- 
dor, they have brought over to the present none 
of the color of their far past; the stolidity of their 
patient, resignation is not enlivened by the gay 
ponchos or vivid skirts which stand out like bizarre 
and gorgeous flowers against the fields of the Ecua- 
dorian Andes. 

In Colombia, the Indian does not stand forth; 
rather he is absorbed into the background of the 
soil of which he is a part, and which he loves with 
the blind dogged love of his race, for even this 
dumbly patient creature has his enthusiasms. He 
loves marriage and the land; he loves the images 
and the glittering tinsel of churches; he loves mar- 
ket days and feast days; and dearly he loves the 
chicha which warms his stomach and his spirit. But 


318 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


he has forgotten the subtly intoxicant power of 
color, more subtle and more enduring than the 
chicha, which inevitably ends in a sodden dulling 
of the very spirit which he strives to gladden. 

Thus was Zipaquira somber on that quiet day 
which was not market day, when we walked through 
its streets; somber as the smoke which oozed from 
the gray roofs of thatch. 

We had presented our letter to the Administrador 
who had summoned the superintendent to escort us. 
But I had had first to be presented to the Adminis- 
trador’s lady, who had, with many embraces, offered 
me brandy and black coffee; who had told me of 
the epidemic of typhoid then raging and just who 
had died; and I had agreed fervently to the pity of 
it, while the kind sefora insisted that I apply very 
pink face powder imported from France. Only after 
the interchange of a thousand sweet expressions of 
regard were we permitted to proceed to the mine 
which she described as ‘‘beautiful and terrible.’’ 

And ‘‘beautiful and terrible’? I found it when, 
after following a long low tunnel, just wide enough 
for the eighteen-inch track over which the barrows 
of ore are trundled, we came suddenly into a huge 
vault, leaving the brilliant electric bulbs of the tun- 
nel to pass into a great and lofty chamber, lit only 


THE HIGH PLATEAU 319 


by the occasional lights which illuminated spots 
where miners were at work. 

In the immensity of the vault any noise of the 
workmen was insignificant. Boys carrying baskets 
of rock salt came and went. They must have talked ; 
there must have been some noise of hacking out the 
salt, and of emptying baskets; but I recall only 
the sudden resonant thunder of blasting; blasting 
sounding on all sides, above as well as around US; 
that thunder and the grinding crunch of a slide 
somewhere in the blackness of the high-arched si- 
lence where vault led to vault; the thunder and the 
crunch echoing as must have echoed the subterra- 
nean forces of the world’s beginning. 

Passing from the mystery of one vault to an- 
other, we came upon a blazing little altar cut in 
the rock. 

Standing before this altar, I saw something mov- 
ing swiftly among the shadows, a legless body pro- 
pelled across the floor on its hands, and moving 
with astonishing speed. 

‘‘He was born like that.’? The superintendent 
answered my unspoken question. ‘‘He’s one of our 
best workmen; we use him to put powder in the 
fuses.’’ 

And then he broke off to say, as though speaking 


320 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


to some one behind me, ‘‘Assemble, caballeros.’’ 
Turning to see to whom so great a word was ad- 
dressed—for caballero, being translated, signified 
knight, nobleman, gentleman, cavalier—I found that 
the force of the mine had silently lined up and were 
standing there, a shadowy company of more or less 
ragged men and boys. 

“‘Caballeros,’’ the superintendent urged, ‘‘I want 
you to march in good order now to the school; quietly 
and in good order like gentlemen.’’ 

Then, with no word of command, they shuffled 
off two by two into the obscurity, those who wore 
hats removing them as they passed. 

‘‘The school?’’ I questioned. 

‘“We give the men an hour of school every morn- 
ing. It’s a new thing, recently instituted by the 
Government.’’ 

‘‘May I go to the school?’’ 

‘*Certainly, sefora, if you can climb the hundred 
and twenty-one steps to the upper mine?’’ 

Of course I could climb them; and so we followed 
that shuffling line of caballeros, penetrating deeper 
into the darkness, stumbling in the uncertain light 
of far-spaced bulbs, until we came to those hun- 
dred and twenty-one steps. 

The climbing was a breathless matter in the close 





IN THE OLD SALT MINE AT ZIPAQUIRA 





THE HIGH PLATEAU 321 


sulphurous air of a mine nine thousand feet above 
the sea. Hiven the two urchins who had adopted 
us at the station, appointing themselves camera- 
and tripod-bearers, even they were breathless as 
they flitted up and down the staircase, their ponchos 
flapping until in the weird gloom they were more 
like gigantic bats than like human urchins. 

In the upper mine we followed the reverberating 
voice of the school, circling a briny lake, past a 
number of tiny shrines where lights did reverence 
to religious pictures, through black vault after black 
vault, until we came to the twilight vault where 
men sat on stools about a wooden counter and were 
educated. 

Creeping into a vacant chair in a shadowy corner, 
I attended school, which on that day had taken the 
form of a lecture on the prevention of typhoid and 
tuberculosis. The men who had been thus assem- 
bled for education listened with a concentration, 
pathetic when I reflected upon the difficulty of ap- 
plying sanitation in a cold misty village, without 
sewage and dependent for water-supply upon the 
fountain in the plaza. But the result of that pathetic 
listening may be that some day Zipaquira will de- 
mand pipes and plumbing. 

‘“‘This,’? said the superintendent at the end of 


322 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


the lecture, ‘‘this was our advanced class.’? In 
another vault the men of the primary class had 
been mastering the alphabet. 

With such a memory we came out from the 
‘‘beauty and the terror’’ of the mine, into the fresh 
chilly air where little Andean whitethroats pro- 
claimed a frenzy of ‘‘sweet cheer here,’’ and where 
even the gray day seemed by comparison luminous. 


There arrived finally the morning when for the 
last time we rose in the cold dawn of Bogota, to 
journey over the Sabana Railway, west to Facata- 
tiva, and thence down from the plateau to Girardot 
on the bank of the Magdalena. 

And old Andrea, the commission agent, through 
whom we had first penetrated the inscrutable doors, 
old Andrea had brought a lovely sheaf of carefully 
arranged white camellias. 

My heart reproached me that we had not fancied 
or afforded anything that she had had for sale. I 
would have made her a gift exceeding any reason- 
able commission, but Andrea was emphatic through 
her tears; for Andrea at the station on that last 
morning actually wept, tears flowing in the network 
of her wrinkles. 

While ‘‘meester’’? dashed off to round up our 
luggage, she sat beside me in the train, with her 


THE HIGH PLATEAU 328 


black shawl pinned tightly about the withered face, 
down which tears trickled. 

She wanted no gift. She put away from her the 
envelope containing the money, declaring that she 
wouldn’t touch a gift. She wept increasingly when- 
ever it was mentioned. We were going away, and 
she knew perfectly well that we would never come 
back; it was too far ...she knew it was far... and 
that we would never return to Bogota. If we would 
only give her a picture; that was what she wanted. 

But we naturally did n’t carry pictures about like 
visiting-cards. Of course there was one of the 
passport photographs; we would give her that and 
trust that no official would later demand it. 

If I do not paint the Latin-American as he is 
often painted, it is because I cannot, having never 
so seen him; it is because of the Andreas, the Sefor 
Vieras, Carrizosas, Espriellas, and the Martinez; be- 
cause of the nuns and the monks, the coachmen and 
bootblacks and room-boys; the Dr. Francos; all the 
strangers who so soon ceased to be strangers and 
became friends. 

I do not deny faults, occasional and much exag- 
gerated discomforts, but I cannot concede that South 
American faults are greater because they happen to 
differ from our own. I have tried earnestly to see 
without prejudice and without partiality, and as I 


324 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


have seen, I have written, transcribing word for 
word conversations with the varied people whom 
we met; letting Colombia thus speak for itself and 
in its own accents. 

And so I show Andrea, whose home is a smoky 
cabin; Andrea bearing a sheaf of camellias, beauti- 
fully arranged; Andrea coming down in the shiver- 
ing dawn to the train, to weep over the departure 
of strangers, to whom she owed nothing, and from 
whom she would accept nothing, nothing but a 
worthless picture taken for passport purposes. 

We stood on the platform to wave to that little 
weeping black figure; and when we returned to our 
seats Bogota was a rapidly diminishing cluster of 
tile and church towers, for the train was speeding 
us from the eastern edge of the plateau, west to 
Facatativa. 

And at Facatativa, while freight and luggage were 
being transferred from the Sabana line to the Fer- 
rocarril de Girardot, small, very ragged boys went 
about selling the cups of black coffee which in Co- 
lombia are more universally peddled than news- 
papers, and almost as continually as lottery-tickets. 

By the Girardot Railway we then descended from 
the cool mountain world, down over the Andes and 
into the tropics. 

As we proceeded it was suddenly apparent that 


THE HIGH PLATEAU 325 


there were fewer Indians in shawls and ponchos. 
We removed first our coats and then our sweaters, 
for chilly air had been replaced by a caressing 
sunny warmth, not yet become hot. 

Pretty girls, still fair like the girls of Bogota, 
came to see the train pull into the blossoming sta- 
tions. In the zone of dark, glossy-leafed coffee 
plantations, we halted thirty minutes to lunch, sur- 
rounded by gardenias, roses and hibiscuses, by fra- 
grant heliotropes, and orange-trees golden with 
fruit. 

After lunch there were palms and bamboo in the 
valleys, and the people who flocked to the stations 
showed the darker skins and the lighter garments 
of the tropics. 

The luxurious beauty of palm and bamboo was in 
turn replaced by arid cactus country, parched and 
dusty. And when in the late afternoon we arrived 
at Girardot, we were again in the world of mosquito- 
netted beds and of white tropical clothing. At din- 
ner the thermometer in the patio stood at ninety de- 
grees; the tall upstanding palm did not even faintly 
quiver against the wan sky, and the heat which 
filled the stifling rooms was motionless. We had 
indeed come down from the high plateau. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
THE DIFFICULT RIVER 


ATCHING the life of the port, we sat on 

\ deck in the cane rockers with which all 
Magdalena River boats are provided: and next to 
us, also watching, rocked two Franciscan monks in 
thick, heavy, brown-hooded robes, with long black 
rosaries suspended from rope girdles. 

At the foot of a high stony bank the brown river 
flowed, incredibly swift, foaming through our stern 
paddle-wheel, which was chained to the boat to 
prevent its revolving. 

Over a neighboring freight-boat a pale hot sun 
was rising, following fast upon the hurried dawn. 

At the top of the bank a dusty road paralleled the 
river. Like the Grand Trunk Road of India, it 
stretched away under dusty trees; and those who 
followed the road were barefoot. There was also 
something of the Grand Trunk in the white heat 
of the road; but there the resemblance ended, for 
instead of turbaned Orientals and saffron-gowned 
Buddhist priests with begging-bowls, there were 


women in loose red smocks, Turkey red, hanging 
326 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 327 


almost to their ankles, with white Panama hats 
crowning their long black hair; hats so much too 
small that they gave the effect of having perched 
for a moment on their way somewhere else. These 
were Indian women, and if there were a burden 
to carry, or charcoal or fodder, vegetables or fruit, 
it was borne on their backs. 

Occasional negro women also traveled the road, 
bare of head as well as of foot; and, whatever their 
load, it was balanced skilfully on the top of their 
heads, while with calico skirts trailing they puffed 
at stout cigars. 

A caravan of mules passed, for much of the river 
freight still climbs the Andes on mule-back. An 
Indian in a dark poncho preceded the caravan, which 
was rounded up in the rear by a child, eas with 
flying diminutive poncho. 

The caravan moved out of the scene. A pig was 
dragged along, and there was much dust. A white 
donkey, cocking his ears, crossed the stage, followed 
by a dejected brown one with head bowed; and like 
all donkeys they subtly achieved the impression of 
being accompanied rather than driven by their mas- 
ters or mistresses, with sometimes even an intima- 
tion that it might after all be the donkey who was 
im command. 

In the early morning the strip of highway was 


328 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


thus busy with pedestrians, who entered the picture 
and were seen for a brief space before the road 
conducted them from the view of the river. 

On a siding along the bank were drawn up freight- 
cars whose contents men transferred to the three 
waiting river-boats. A locomotive, smoking tre- 
mendously, ran back and forth over the double 
switchback, depositing full cars, picking up empties, 
and tooting triumphantly. 

To the bank were moored the three river-boats, 
two-seasleds, two hydroplanes, and a score of dug- 
out canoes. 

Such is Girardot, the only port of entrance to the 
capital and to the populous plateau, as well as the 
point from which those bound for the Cauca Valley 
and the west coast proceed partly by train, but 
chiefly by mule, up over the Quindio Pass and down 
the Andes to the Pacific. 

And it is the Magdalena which flows so swiftly 
at the foot of the bank; the river about which centers 
the past and the present of Colombia, the one great 
artery of traffic in a land whose mountain ranges 
stand forbidding guard over imprisoned riches, 
over mines of gold and silver and platinum and 
emeralds, over coal and oil. 

The Magdalena’s fame rests not upon its length 
or its width or its depth, as does that of the Amazon 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 329 


or the Yang-tse, but upon the fact that it has been 
from the beginning the way into Colombia, and upon 
the spectacular difficulty of its navigation. 

The boats which ply up and down this capricious 
river are flat and broad; for even when loaded to 
capacity they may not safely draw more than three 
and a half feet, while in the dry season they carry 
only half their normal load. Therefore in the lower 
river, whose width permits it, they add to themselves 
flat freight-barges, so that they proceed like maternal 
ducks surrounded by a brood of ducklings. 


But on the upper river we made our slow and 
cautious turning without the complication of a flock | 
of barges, advancing unhampered down the rapid 
current which, rising in the Andes, hurries north 
to the sea, flowing between the central and the east- 
ern ranges, throughout three quarters of the length 
of the country. 

Precipitous hills shut us in on this upper river; 
bare, colored hills with at far intervals fields of 
ripe yellow corn lying in their valleys; hills limit- 
ing our vision to the vision of the river. Some- 
times bamboo grew by the water’s edge, and there 
were on the banks glistening black rocks, like seals 
just emerged dripping from the water. 

The river swept us through gorges, into whirl- 


330 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


pools, and over swirling rapids. It showed us vul- 
tures assembled on a beach as dignified as a con- 
vention of parsons, cows in the cool shadow of trees, 
and clustered canoes promising a village invisible 
from the water. The imprisoning foot-hills shut out 
all else. 

Flying fast and low one of the planes which we 
had left in Girardot rushed over our heads, the 
A-10 on its way to Barranquilla. With its passing 
we seemed to move like snails along the sheen of 
the river, twisting sharply and with shrill warning 
whistles around the base of that jagged range over 
which we, too, had once flown. 

Those strange fluted mountains came down to the 
top of the sheer banks which shut us in; and upon 
them the sunlight lay in red and yellow patches, 
while a crooked white trail climbed hotly under the 
equatorial sun. 

We proceeded between shelves of rock upon which 
many a river-boat had registered itself a total loss; 
past a tributary stream as dry as though water had 
never flowed over its stony bed; past little strips 
of beach where women, like scarlet flowers, drooped 
over the pounding of clothes, or walked for refresh- 
ment into the river without troubling to remove 
their gay garments. 

From rocking-chairs we surveyed the panorama 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 331 


of these banks, and I made the discovery that monks 
on the way from one cloister to another are the 
most responsive of all chance traveling companions. 
In their eager pleasure at the adventure of every 
turn of the winding river we had become friends 
almost at once: they had presented us with the 
usual religious medals, told us whence they came 
and whither they went, and made us known to a 
famous battle-scarred general in a white uniform; 
wounded, they whispered, in the battle of Las Do- 
lores, in the struggle between the Conservatives 
and the Liberals in the year ‘‘one thousand eight 
hundred and ninety-nine’’; a battle which, they said, 
lasted ‘‘seven days with their nights.’’ | 

There was on board also a poet from Spain, read- 
ing his verses in various cities of the Republic; two 
dainty beauties of Bogota, on their first visit to the 
coast; and a small boy on his first journey anywhere. 

Together we shared the events of the way; to- 
gether cried the untranslatable ‘‘Caramba!’’ of dis- 
may when, with a grinding crunch, we ran aground, 
and together agreed that one cannot after all be 
said properly to know the Magdalena unless one has 
run aground. 

Meanwhile men went below to investigate and 
to patch fresh wounds in a bottom already covered 
with dents and patches. 


332 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Thus our boat felt its way down to Ambalema, 
its first official stop, where banana-leaves flopped 
against little white houses, where women seemed a 
reflection on the sandy beach of the blossoming 
flame-trees under which they stood, and where men 
came on board selling cigars, Ambalema being the 
port of the Magdalena’s tobacco zone. 

Six hours after leaving Giradot we tied up at 
Beltran, the end of the upper-river stage of our 
journey. Although Beltran was hot and dry, 
like all the upper-river country, the green gate of 
the steamboat office squeaked in the small breeze, in 
which we sat realizing the tedious and costly coast- 
to-interior communication; while men carried 
freight and luggage from our boat into the railroad 
station, from which it would all have again to be 
transferred to the train which was to take us sixty- 
five miles around the rapids to the port of La 
Dorada on the lower river. 


The way around the rapids lay through a parched 
and dusty land, where burning wind blew in tall 
dry grasses; where the light was bright and hot 
on the fields, and where big pale-barked trees shaded 
the road beside the line. At intervals a horseman 
cantered along this road, and the great wooden 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 333 


gates which evidently separate plantation from 
plantation slammed dryly behind him. 

There is a certain station famed for its pine- 
apples, and there the train obligingly halted while, 
relying upon inoculations, we ignored germs and 
recklessly consumed the world’s most delicious pine- 
apples, three slices for five cents, passed in through 
the windows. There thirsty passengers—monk and 
general, poet and beauty—all hung out of car win- 
dows devouring the juicy dripping slices, until the 
supply was finished and more were prepared by 
resting the fruit on the railroad track while the 
skin was hacked off with a machete, big enough to 
serve as a weapon rather than as a knife to prepare 
pineapple for waiting passengers. 

Beyond this station the train hurried into a fan- 
tastic voleanic valley, where weird rocks inclose a 
grassy plain from which rise castles and fortresses 
and pyramids of grim gray rock, long ago thrown 
up by the convulsions of a restless planet. 

And beyond the valley there was Mariquita, where 
an aerial cableway taps one of Colombia’s isolated 
and populous mountain regions. 

That was of course wonderful and interesting as 
still another attempt to overcome the transportation 
difficulties which impede the development of all 
Andean countries; attempts which, in a journey 


334 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


from the interior to the coast, or vice versa, one 
may see in every stage of their evolution; from 
eanoe and raft through river-boats, old and new, to 
sea-sled; from mule and ox-cart to railroad and 
motor-bus, cableway and aéroplane. 

But when I gazed out of the car window at 
Mariquita, it was not upon the laborious miracles 
of ambitious man that my mind dwelt, but upon a 
day more than three centuries ago when the con- 
queror Quesada died of leprosy here at Mariquita. 
It was on the last day of his eighty eventful years 
that Quesada made the will in which he left a sum 
to provide that on the hill of Limba there should 
be always a jar of water for wayfarers. The place, 
he said, was hot . . . and there was no water near 
at hand. 

Thus Quesada, in the pain and fever of the end, 
remembered ... remembered the hot exhausting 
marches of his long-past youth, and, remembering, 
provided a jar of water on the hill of Limba... . 

After Mariquita there is Honda, and, after 
Honda, darkness came. Sparks thrown out by our 
engine ignited the dry grass along the line, and 
little licking flames spread until they penetrated the 
forest, which here and there became a forest of fire, 
in which the trunks of trees glowed red in the 
darkness. 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 335 


Sometimes in stretches of lonely darkness the 
train came to sudden and meaningless stops, when 
for no apparent reason, we halted in the stifling 
night. 


Then at last there was La Dorada, and our waiting 
boat quite dazzlingly electric, and crowds of dusky 
gesticulating porters clamoring to transfer luggage. 

The boat was one of the newest of the river- 
steamers, with tiny single cabins, positively surgi- 
cal in their immaculate whiteness; each furnished 
with an electric fan, a wash-basin, a mirror, and a 
narrow canvas-covered bed. There is nothing more; 
for the traveler is expected to provide his own soap, 
towels, sheets, blanket, pillow, and pillow-case, as 
well as the essential mosquito bed-net. 

But it is not so troublesome as it sounds, One 
learns to organize one’s necessities, and in a few 
minutes the clean, bare little cabins are transformed 
into cool fragrant havens of rest. 

Our swift preparations were almost complete 
when the Franciscan monks appeared to wish us 
good night and to say that as they were sleeping 
on deck they would be grateful if we would take 
charge of their valuables. I love to remember that 
to strangers traveling in their land, to acquaint- 
ances literally of a day, these monks intrusted the 


336 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


little black hand-bags containing all the earthly 
goods with which they were moving from one reli- 
gious cloister to another; bags containing perhaps 
money to defray the journey, perhaps a few 
cigarettes, and certainly many medals of the famed 
Virgin of Chiquinguira. 

And we had already retired to the comfort of the 
tightly stretched canvas beds, used all over the hot 
country of Colombia, when the inadequate cabin- 
boy announced that because the river was ‘‘so bad’”’ 
we would not start until dawn. He spoke as though 
it were an unusual occurrence, but we later dis- 
covered that the river was always ‘‘so bad’’ that 
boats rarely traveled at night until within two days 
of Barranquilla. 

But we had slipped into the timeless mood of the 
Magdalena; when we started did not matter, and not 
even the loading of the boat postponed that pro- 
found sleep which follows the long days of travel 
in Colombia, where trains and sea-sleds, boats and 
aeroplanes all depart at the break of day. Indeed, 
nothing short of a tropical tempest disturbed our 
rest at La Dorada. 

The tempest came with elemental fury of crash 
and flare and torrent, beside whose violence the 
rain which we saw come to Barranquilla, the soft 
showers which fell upon the bananas and the faint 














THE MAGDALENA — AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 337 


drizzle of Bogota, seemed scarcely worthy to be 
classed as rain. 

It beat threateningly upon the flat roof over the 
cabins, falling like a heavy weight rather than like 
raindrops. It lashed the waters of the Magdalena, 
which swirled past the forested bank to which we 
were moored. And in the lightning the jungle 
showed livid green. 

Suddenly there had come into the night the 
thunder and flash of that tempest; and then sud- 
denly all was again dark and calm, as though the 
whole performance had been turned on and off by 
some miracle-working switch. And, with its pass- 
ing, it left the air so freshly cool that I groped for 
a blanket. 


Macaws flying high and calling as they flew an- 
nounced the day, and I waked to find that close 
on the starboard side a dripping green forest 
slipped by. 

Above Beltran we had been conducted by a cir- 
cuitous stream through a country of stark fluted 
hills, of elusive subtle coloring; rocky painted moun- 
tains seen through the shimmer of dust-dry haze; 
but the spirit of the Magdalena seemed to dwell 
not in that bizarre country but here where deep 
jungle shuts in the gleaming breadth of the river, 


338 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


here where the perfume of the vine-draped forest 
is distilled in sunshine. 

In rocking-chairs on the deck we looked out over 
the flat bow washed cool and wet by the flying spray. 

Miles of forest slipped by. 

There was a solitary hut at the margin of the 
river. It grew at the foot of a lofty tree whose 
silver bole stood out like a column in some temple 
of nymphs; stood out against dense limitless jungle. 
And above the little open-sided thatch-roofed hut 
drooped the fronds of cocoanut and banana, breath- 
ing a benediction of plenty. 

Behind us the friendly monks had placed their 
chairs; and as our group enlarged, every one had 
to be told how every one else had passed the night; 
and every one ‘‘made himself so happy’’ at the 
well-being of every one else. 

From green wall to green wall we followed the 
fickle course of the channel. A great blue butterfly 
was blown over the boat; little flocks of yellow 
butterflies migrated from one side of the river to the 
other, flying bravely out across the wide and glis- 
tening stream; while along the banks all the herons 
in the world fished in meditative solitude. The 
boat slowed down as we scraped ominously over the 
sandy bed of the stream; and the monks’ talk of 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 339 


their birthplace somewhere in the Cauca Valley was 
interrupted by the usual ‘‘carambas.”’ 

The monks had been for many years in the mon- 
asteries of the plateau, but they had come from the 
beautiful Cauca Valley, and that was a memory to 
be treasured. 

Listening, I realized that the Spanish language 
is grammar set to music, to a stately music whose 
sonorous plurals emphasize their gender, and in 
which there is a symmetry in the very regularity of 
their irregular verbs. 

The Magdalena they conceded to be very similar 
to their Cauca. But in the Cauca, they said, there 
were no alligators; and they would see alligators. 
The small boy on his first journey, also never having 
seen alligators, nominated himself to point one out, 
borrowing my field-glasses and discovering an alli- 
gator in every stump or floating tree-trunk. 

Harly in the morning a passenger had been heard 
to fire a shot at what was reported to be an alligator, 
and not one had been seen since. Based upon the 
fact of this shot, the monks and the child and I made 
up a tale, in which the escaping alligator returned to 
a world beneath the sparkling surface of the river, 
there to publish his adventure as an ‘‘Extraordi- 
nary Happening,’’ a ‘‘Horrible Catastrophe,’’ after 


340 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


the fashion of Latin-American head-lines, frag- 
ments of which my mind had retained. 

And the monks chimed in with the suggestion that 
we send a cable to announce that ‘‘ peaceable monks 
of the order of San Francisco, unprovided with 
pistols, traveled for the first time the Magdalena 
and greatly desired to see alligators.’’ 

But no alligators appeared, and even the small 
boy from Anolaima wearied of watching for them 
and turned his attention to my notebook. 

‘¢Are you writing a book, mi senora?’’ he inquired 
politely. 

‘6Ves,”? 

‘‘Describing your impressions?’’ 

‘“Yes ... why don’t you write one?”’ 

‘“‘T had thought of it’’...very gravely... 
‘‘but I gave up the idea. It requires too much 
thinking to make it sufficiently pretty.’’ 

There was thus no ennw on our Magdalena boat, 
the mere fact of existence being to the Colombian 
traveler important, and every detail of the journey 
absorbing. There was always talk, unending stories 
of the vicissitudes of river travel. Those who were 
experienced in the ways of the Magdalena had much 
to say of the difference between traveling with or 
against the current. We might come down in five 
days if... always if... luck were with us; but 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER | 341 


no one could hope to go up in less than eight; and 
that also if one were lucky, and if one took an ex- 
press oil-burning mail-boat which didn’t even have 
to stop for wood. 

But the Magdalena was no respector of mail- 
boats; and an Expreso was just as likely to get stuck 
as an Intermedio, the slow boat often proving to be 
the tortoise in the race. It was all a gamble on the 
whims of the river. 

Sitting around the table in the little screened-in 
dining-room, these fellow-passengers described to 
us the Magdalena of their grandfathers, when 
people contemplating a trip on this difficult river 
made their wills and said possibly final farewells to — 
family and friends. 

Travel in those days was by champan, and a 
champan is a large stout raft, the center of which 
is covered by a low-arched shelter of bent bamboo, 
thatched with palm. The champan is propelled by 
sails when there is a bit of wind, but chiefly by poles, 
for wind is rare in the mountain-bounded valley of 
the river. 

It used to require from one to three months thus 
to ascend the Magdalena. 

We knew how hot it was when we stopped to take 
wood? ... Well, that was how it was always on 
slow-moving champanes. And in the days of the 


342 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


grandfathers there had been no comfort of ice or 
of electric fans, no variety of food. 

The journey had been an imprisonment in the 
confined space under the thatch, where clouds of 
mosquitos swarmed, while, slowly toiling, men 
poled, singing sometimes a wild song as they poled; 
and then silent, dripping in the heat. 

Many had died on the way. There had been a 
viceroy and his vicereine, accustomed to the regal 
splendor of Madrid. They had made the trip in 
the record thirty days, with at every point relays 
of the best and freshest rowers, and with all pos- 
sible arrangements to supply palatable food. 

But the poor vicereine had been unable to endure 
the realities of primitive tropical life on the great 
hot savage river shut in by terrifying jungle. Her 
child, born prematurely on the way, had been buried 
on the bank of that cruel river, and the viceroy had 
died a few days after reaching Bogota. 

Such was the terror of the journey for those used 
to the life of courts that one viceroy had governed 
from Santa Marta and another from Cartagena, 
refusing ever to attempt the perilous trip to Honda 
and the arduous ride over the Andes. 

For nearly three centuries this was the way to 
Bogota. 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 343 


Then a hundred years ago had come the 
steamboat. 

The captain had a book in which we might read 
the history of steam service on the river. 

And, sitting at ease in our rockers, we read; 
spanning the years from the earliest steam enter- 
prise in 1824 to 1911, when the first of the river- 
boats was equipped with electricity, to 1912 when the 
first ice-plant was installed. The record is dotted 
with the words ‘‘wrecked’’ and ‘‘foundered,’’ as 
the history of Bogota is punctuated with the word 
‘‘earthquake.’’ 

Man’s battle with the river condenses itself thus: 

Steamer lost by explosion of boilers. Service 
abandoned. New attempts: German, English, 
North American, Colombian. Draft reduced from 
five feet to three and a half feet. Stern-wheels 
substituted for side-wheels. Losses during the 
years: against a bank; in collision with another 
boat; foundered; burned; explosion and total loss; 
lost on the rocks; ran against a tree-trunk while 
descending the river; lost in the rapids of Honda; 
by explosion; ran against a rock and foundered; 
burned; ran into a tree-trunk; lost on the rocks; 
foundered... . 

And the tale of these disasters concluded often 


344 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


with the information that ‘‘crew, captain, and pas- 
sengers had perished.’’ 

No wonder their grandfathers had made wills and 
farewells. 

But still the Magdalena is the most traveled and 
the most practical route into the interior of Co- 
lombia; and still the champanes of Indians are seen 
upon the river; while among the older steamers 
many are reminiscent of those early days. Such 
was the old Vasques in which some weeks before 
we had traveled from Calamar to Barranquilla, and 
in which we had found a hen in possession of what 
did duty as a bath-room. But even the Vasques 
was provided with rockers; for, whatever you lack, 
you may rock down the Magdalena. 


After taking many sacks of coffee we left Puerto 
Berrio in company with four other boats, the prog- 
ress of each of which became an everlasting topie, 
the news of those ahead being retailed to us when- 
ever we stopped for wood, just as we were doubt- 
less added to the news broadcasted to those which 
followed us. 

There would be gossip of the Lépez Pena, which 
had been disabled somewhere up the river, and of 
the Barranquilla, which all the way down was re- 
ported to be just ahead of us, having ‘‘slept’’ at this 





A MAGDALENA RIVER-BOAT 





THE DIFFICULT RIVER 345 


point or that. And there was the Caldas, which had 
preceded us by some days. 

The poor Caldas had been unfortunate. It had 
stuck fast in the mud below Puerto Berrio; and 
later there had been an explosion of one of its boil- 
ers, and all on board had had to be transferred to 
another boat, arriving thirty-six hours late in 
Barranquilla. 

Meanwhile, with on each side two loaded barges, 
our boat, the Atldntico, followed with maternal dig- 
nity the devious way of the channel; from bank 
to bank, now by the left branch around an island, 
now to the right, and again back to midstream. 
Sometimes there would be a menacing scrunch over © 
the sand, and sometimes, to avoid running head on 
into sand or mud, the captain would shut off the 
engines, turn the boat sideways, and let the current 
carry it over the dangerous shallows, until it was 
safe to right it and to proceed at the usual speed. 

On the deck below the rockers, men stoked the 
fires whose flames passed through tubes and around 
the boilers, two men feeding the fire and two more 
bringing wood. When the stokers threw down their 
iron pokers there was a sharp clang as pokers struck 
against ash-pans. ‘There were heavy measured 
pulsations when the fires were being stoked and the 
engines exhausting through the two tall smoke- 


346 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


stacks which on Magdalena boats stand side by side 
facing the bow. When the fire came up and the 
drafts were closed, the exhaust was shifted to two 
little pipes near the stern, and then the heavy throb- 
bing would be suddenly softened, diminished, as 
though the engines were falling into a gentle sleep, 
maintaining the same rhythm but hushed. 

All the way down the Magdalena we moved to this 
alternating pulsation. Heavy ... heavy ... Soft 

} SOLEMN Bott, 1% 

We thus knew when the fires were stoked and when 
the men rested and smoked. In the stern the big 
wheel, which is more like a cage than like a wheel, 
was turning; turning toward the boat and lifting 
the water in a fantastic waterfall; while we, in the 
stiff breeze of our going, sat wrapped in coats. 

What was the day? We never knew. It was 
vaguely the end of the summer dry season of the 
year 1923, with the autumn rains coming in nightly 
tempests. And we were on a river-boat bound for 
Barranquilla; but arriving there did not in the least 
matter. The mood of the Magdalena is the mood of 
eternal flowing, ongoing life; an ever-changing but 
never-ending life. 

In that long stretch of the river extending north 
from La Dorada to El Banco, it passes through a 
great uninhabited section, shut in by the gracious 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 347 


dignity of primeval jungle. At long intervals, some- 
times fifty miles apart, huts, solitary or in clusters 
of two or three, invited, with their stacks of wood, 
the patronage of river-boats. 

From our rockers it was often possible to look 
through a break in the curtain of vines, into the 
cathedral depths of the forest, and to feel the archi- 
tecture of the jungle; with its towering tree-trunks 
supporting the spreading branches of its roof, and 
the great roots which buttress those columnar trees, 
on whose silvery surface play the shadows of lesser 
trees. 

There were hours when it pleased the river to 
mirror this lovely jungle, suppressing its detail and — 
giving back only the shimmering spirit of the thing. 


It is, the gods permitting, but four days from La 
Dorada to Barranquilla; but in the journey the river 
performs a miracle, and time stands still, dividing 
itself into impressions rather than into days. 

There was thus the freshness of early mornings 
with turquoise and gold macaws, noisily compan- 
ionable; stiff-legged haughty herons fishing along 
the banks; great blue herons and white herons and 
little dark herons; with kingfishers flashingly 
brillant. 

There was the heat of noons, when alligators 


348 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


basked stupid and open-mouthed on uncovered 
sandy bars; alligators sometimes in groups of thirty 
or more, plentiful enough, now that the monks so 
ambitious to see them had BH us for their cloister 
in Medellin. 

And at noon we partook of the heavy breakfast 
served us by a barefoot youth in collarless and cuff- 
less blue shirt, with mussy white trousers frankly 
supported by wide black suspenders, his shock of 
hair topped by a brown felt jockey-cap. He fed us 
an appalling number of courses, served on gigantic 
platters: sancocho, the native soup in which swim 
whole joints of chicken, whole potatoes, bananas, 
and sections of corn on its cob; yucca and mamé 
and pineapple. 

There was always the sweet breeze of our ad- 
vancing and the hot suffocation of our stops. And 
there were sun-sets the glory of whose changing 
color was reflected on the wide gleaming river, the 
river of flowing moods, rose and gold and violet in 
the rising and setting suns; at dusk svill and calmly 
blue, as thoughtful as a mountain lake; again opales- 
cent and fanciful, or sparkling copper in the sunny 
noons; a constantly changing river, changing its 
color and its course, dividing and subdividing, lay- 
ing bare sandy beaches for its innumerable alli- 
gators; tearing away its own banks and creating 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 349 


islands where there had been no islands, carving out 
new channels for itself; but always flowing, scorning 
the brief measure of our time. 

Soft brilliant nights following fast upon the sun- 
sets, and then for safety we were forced to tie up 
to the bank. Lying in the hot darkness under pro- 
tecting mosquito-nets, we would listen to the vibrant 
voice of the jungle and await the refreshment of 
that furious nightly deluge which seemed actually 
to shake the boats moored upon the river. 

Certain small events stand out among these im- 
pressions of the days. 

Once we were stuck fast in the mud for an hour; 
and once in a great space between wood-pile huts 
we ran out of fuel, the steam-pressure dropped, and 
we were forced to burn the poles of our barges in 
order to move on to the next wood station. 

There was an early morning when we docked at 
Puerto Wilches to take on more sacks of coffee and 
cases of cigars, brought down on mules from the 
great isolated Department of Bucaramanga. The 
sun beat fiercely upon the steaming vegetation of 
this tiny port, where in the shrubs orange butterflies 
swarmed like restless flowers. And at Puerto 
Wilches the little boat Sofia stole a march on us 
and went ahead puffing importantly. 

We made a stop at Barranca Bermeja, to leave 


350 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


fruit for the Tropical Oil Company; and another, 
at Gamorra, which with its heat and its mosquitos, 
recalled the sufferings of Quesada’s band of con- 
querors on that first exploration of the Magdalena. 
There had been a point, perhaps at what is now 
Gamorra, when even the fortitude of conquering 
Spain had faltered, and Quesada in a lengthy speech 
had loftily commanded that ‘‘murmuring should 
cease.’’ 

Beyond Gamorra the character of the country 
began to change. The jungle was little by little 
receding, and there were more villages. From time 
to time tributary streams had joined the Magda- 
lena; the Lebrija, the Carare, the César, but most 
important of them all, the sedate Cauca, sweeping 
in on the left. 

On the day before we reached flat open cattle 
country, we made a sunset stop at the island of 
Santa Cruz, the island of the Holy Cross, negotiat- 
ing the usual crab-wise landing, necessitated by the 
force of the downward-sweeping current. It was 
our custom to turn sideways, to drift to a point 
below the landing, and then, facing upstream, to 
approach the bank, with our engines counteracting 
the power of the current. 

We had run almost the length of the island, and 
every inch of the way I had hoped we might. stop; 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 351 


for the island of the Holy Cross is the tropical 
island of one’s dreams. 

Its houses stand in single file along the bank, in 
which steps are cut down to the water, and at the 
foot of the steps dugout canoes are moored. All 
the waterfront is dominated by huge mango-trees, 
red with young leaves, darkly glossy with the leaves 
of maturity, and drenched with heavy drooping 
fruit. Little thatched houses gasp under the tropi- 
cal luxuriance of banana and cocoanut, lime and 
orange and gourd trees, beneath which the deep 
shade is sun-flecked. Even the little church is 
thatched. 

We sidled down past a landing and back again, 
while on the bank a tiny naked boy danced and 
clapped his hands in welcome. 

With a sense of the preciousness of every moment 
we wandered eagerly about this island. The sun 
was fast setting, and in a few moments we would 
have taken on our supply of wood and steamed 
away; for in this lower half of the lower river it 
was at last safe to travel at night. 

We explored, therefore, eagerly, finding the 
island’s civilization to be almost independent of the 
rest of the universe. Gourd-trees provide dishes and 
utensils of all sizes and shapes; little gourds used as 
cups, larger gourds as eating-bowls, and still larger 


352 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


ones as dishes or pans; others are cut into spoons, 
and many are carved and decorated with jungle dyes. 

There are big earthenware jars of island make, 
woven straw sleeping-mats of rich colorful design, 
scarlet hammocks, and fishing-nets stretched in the 
sun. In stone mortars the women pound their 
island-grown corn, while in a primitive mill the 
sugar-cane is ground. 

There is a noble cow and any number of pigs and 
guinea-pigs. 

I saw nowhere any product of machine manufac- 
ture except the calico of the women’s frocks and 
the heavier cotton cloth of the men’s trousers. 
There were no diseased or maimed people, none in 
rags. Had there not been mosquitos in the oint- 
ment, the island would have seemed a perfect idyl, 
to us stopping at sunset for wood. 

We came, we took wood, and we steamed away 
in the gold and purple afterglow, our captain having 
acquired a big red boutonnére for one lapel of his 
white coat, and the tiniest of bright-eyed green 
parrakeets for the other. 

Three hours later the river mirrored the lights 
of Magangué. Brightly illuminated the Juni hur- 
ried by without stopping, whereupon the captain, 
whose heart had all the way centered upon the in- 


a a 





CITIZENS OF THE ISLAND OF HOLY CROSS 





THE DIFFICULT RIVER 353 


termittent race with the four boats which had 
together left Puerto Berrio, announced that we 
might not go ashore, since he would spend but 
twenty minutes in Magangué. 

They were the twenty minutes of a fantastic 
drama. Two wide flights of stone steps led up to 
the high embankment, where crowded the popula- 
tion; with rows of women squatting on the ground, 
their wares, chiefly guava jelly in small wooden 
boxes, spread out before them; and beside each 
woman her lantern; lanterns like footlights showing 
the skirts of the women red as glowing embers. 

Behind the thronged waterfront were houses, like 
houses of stage-scenery painted on canvas; houses 
flatly without perspective, as though they might at 
any moment be folded up and taken away; houses 
with a varied roof-line against a painted night. 

There was the roof with blue scallops, the roof 
finished by a railing, the narrow house which 
stretched itself into an upper story, where there 
was a balcony with a closed French window, done 
in white rectangles, like the rice-paper houses of 
Japan. And there were shops in this canvas street, 
the wide-open shops of the tropics, with goods ar- 
ranged on shelves to the ceilings, and lit with the 
whimsical light of lanterns. 


\ 


354 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


We were just pushing off, the captain impatient 
to overtake that impertinent little Junin, when a 
man gesticulating on the shore implored. Part of 
his possessions were on board, but his trunk had 
not come. ‘‘Run and get it,’’ the captain shouted. 
The man set off at a trot. The crowd jeered. 

And there soon came running his trunk, his boxes, 
his matting-roll of bedding, all at top speed, while 
citizens and passengers hooted; for on the Mag- 
dalena one is easily amused. 

When we left Magangué behind we retained to 
illumine our heaven the shiny half-moon and the 
stars which had been pasted in the sky above the 
theatrical little town. 

Under that sky we rocked, while from the shore 
the night spoke in a ceaseless hum. Once a heron 
with great slow flaps flew across our bow; ghostly 
pale, and strangely detached from its squawk. The 
sky became flecked with clouds, between which in- 
quisitively peered the big bright stars. Before us 
the water foamed over the bow, as in the stern it 
was churned up over the revolving wheel. 

And some one said that on the next afternoon we 
would be in Barranquilla. But what was to-morrow? 
Or yesterday? And surely there could be no Bar- 
ranquilla. There could be only the Magdalena, 
sharing with us the flowing eternity of its dawns, 


THE DIFFICULT RIVER 355 


of its dazzling noons, of its glorified sunsets, and 
the stormy brilliance of its nights. While to the 
rhythm of the exhausts, heavy ... and soft, we, 
like the river, went on forever... . 


CHAPTER XIX 
THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 


HE chronology of a journey being insignifi- 
cant, it is immaterial that our flight over the 
Land of Miracles preceded by some weeks certain 
of the impressions already set down. But it is im- 
portant that the aéroplane should stand in the book 
where it stands in the country; removed by four 
hundred years from the days of the sorceress; 
standing at the end of the past, and on the threshold 
of the future... 


The adventure began on the night before we were 
to fly. It took on the color of reality when at dinner 
on the veranda of the Pension Inglesa in Barran- 
quilla a man—a barefoot native—came and stood 
quietly beside our table. 

‘‘The automobile from the hydro-avidn,”’ he said, 
‘will call for you at a quarter to five in the 
morning.”’ 

He spoke as calmly of a hydroplane as though he 
had said, ‘‘ To-morrow, sefior, at a quarter to five the 


mules will be at the door.’’ 
356 


THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 357 


After dinner we sat in a swinging seat under the 
trees on the grounds of the Pension. Sitting there 
in the silky night, with a cool breeze rustling in the 
palm-trees, my mind went back to the day when, 
on our way to Ecuador, a fellow-passenger had told 
us of the hydroplane service just then being initi- 
ated on the Magdalena River. 

To fly up that famous river, from the coast into 
the heart of the Colombian Andes, had become at 
once my great desire. That my first flight should 
follow the course of that particular river possessed 
my imagination. 

I had put away the fascinating idea of this flight 
in the most important pigeonhole of my mind. Then 
two years later, with the Ecuador book finished, the | 
alluring plan had passed slowly through the stages 
of possibility and probability and at last into 
certainty. 

But all this time it had been only a gorgeous ad- 
venture. I had not foreseen the part it was to play 
in my realization of Colombia. Thus, on the night 
‘before our flight, I remained in that simple kingdom 
of adventure. ; 

This hushed anticipation was followed by an hour 
of feverish packing, for we made the disquieting 
discovery that our bags weighed seventeen pounds 
more than we had estimated. 


358 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


In Colombia one flies by weight, and not only is 
there a high charge for excess, but beyond a certain 
weight the planes will not rise from the water. The 
amount of luggage is therefore both financially and 
physically limited. As one proceeds inland the 
atmospheric conditions make this problem of rising 
increasingly difficult, and the Scadta Company— 
which, being interpreted, is the Sociedad Colombo- 
Alemana de Transportes Aereos—had warned us 
that our luggage must be reduced to the fewest pos- 
sible pounds. 

Thus at the last moment we frantically eliminated 
all luxuries and many necessities. Hiven our linen 
dust-coats we decided were too heavy to take. An 
umbrella and rubbers were discarded. Medicines 
were thrown overboard. 

When finally the trunks which were to be left 
behind were strapped and locked, we once more 
went over the contents of our two hand-bags to see 
that nothing remained which could be cast away. 
For the dozenth time I inspected my flying- 
garments, which I had laid out with anxious care. 
And at last I crept in under my mosquito-netting, 
to lie long awake staring up into its roof, vibrant 
with the sense of something wonderful about to be. 
I must have slept briefly, for before the portero 
came knocking at the door I was again awake. 


THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 359 


I went out on the balcony. The royal palm in 
front of the house stood ghostly green in the flare 
of an electric light. It stood quite still in the breath- 
less calm which follows the death of the night 
breeze. 

All the world seemed hushed on that morning of 
anticipation. In its tense stillness I hurried into 
those garments which I had laid out the night be- 
fore, with as meticulous care as though their ar- 
ranging were my last earthly act. And when at 
half-past four the table-boy brought in the break- 
fast-tray, the electric lights had gone out, and the 
palm was very dark, a black palm in the dim timid 
light of dawn. 

We went down to the office where Mrs. Meek, the 
English proprietress of the Pensidn, was already on 
duty; she kept tropical hours and was always at 
her desk at five; it was nothing, she said, to rise a 
little earlier to see us off. 

The pale light had slowly warmed the sky when 
the expected motor turned into the drive promptly 
at a quarter before five. 

Even Mrs. Meek then shared our sense of excite- 
ment, for she began to scurry about saying she ’d 
intended to give us cotton. Now she could n’t find 
any. Well, we must go. But we must be sure to tell 
them in the plane to give us cotton. 


360 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


‘‘Cotton for your ears, you know.’’ 

The motor stopped. It was a station-cart with 
lengthwise seats. There were the vague shapes of 
three men in the car. They were speaking German 
in deep guttural voices; for the Scadta Company, 
although a joint Colombian and German enterprise, 
is directed by Germans. 

‘‘Be sure,’’? Mrs. Meek was repeating, ‘‘to remind 
them to give you cotton—’’ That... and that she 
would take good care of our trunks and bags until 
we returned. 

And then the little light of her office was left 
behind, and we jolted out on the streets and through 
the sleeping town. 

The streets were narrow, incredibly rough and 
dusty. We swung so alarmingly around curves that 
we had to cling to our seats, while we coughed in the 
thick choking dust. 

We stopped suddenly. A man got into the ear, 
and there was more German. It was light enough 
. now to see the tanned florid faces of the men and 
the brown flannel and khaki in which they were 
dressed. 

We drew up before another house. A native 
woman came in response to our horn. ‘‘ Already 
he has gone,’’ she said in the soft rapid Spanish of 
the coast. 


THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 361 


And we went on. The little white one-story 
houses were now distinct. 

Then at last we turned steeply down to the 
hangars. 

_ There two machines had been dragged out and 
stood ready for flight—the Bogota and the Cauca. 

As our luggage was placed on the scales we dis- 
missed the involuntary and futile impulse to discuss 
whether we should be weighed with or without our 
heavy coats. There was no evading the scales of 
the Scadta. They weighed, I felt, even one’s 
thoughts. 

After our bags and the camera were weighed we 
got on the scales. It was dark inside the hangar, 
and the men struck matches to read the figures. 

Although we ourselves were fortunately within 
the weight allowed in the minimum charge of $500, 
those two emaciated suit-cases, one camera, my 
note-book and pencils brought us up to thirty-nine 
kilos excess, for which we had to pay $185 extra! 

While the bill was being settled I walked over to 
the poised and waiting planes. The sky was now 
rose, and rose lay along the river. In the air was 
that brief freshness of a tropical dawn. 

While I waited the Bogotdéd speeded up and shot 
whirring out over the water. She skimmed, left 
the river, and was off. She carried no passengers, 


362 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


for she was loaded to capacity with gold certificates 
to the value of a million and a half dollars. 

In Bogota a bank had failed, the Banco Lépez, the 
great house of Lépez with commercial and agricul- 
tural and shipping interests all over Colombia. 
Lopez had failed, and panic was threatened. 

To prevent a demoralized run on all banks the 
Government had added two days to the Independ- 
ence day holiday, which happened to fall on the 
date of our flight. During these three days of fiesta, 
planes were to rush bank-notes up from the coast 
and from the interior city of Medellin, while the 
Government, in collaboration with a monetary com- 
mission from the United States, organized a Fed- 
eral Bank. 

As I watched the Bogotd fly from Barranquilla, 
I felt that here was the last word in fairy-tales, with 
menacing danger banished by winged creatures 
flying to the relief of a beloved city. And, as though 
symbolic, the sky had become gold, and gold the 
water. 


When we finally climbed up over the left wing 
and into the Cauca, about to explore the Magdalena 
from the air, that $635 seemed absurdly little to pay 
for so glorious an adventure. 

We took our places in the little coupé, built to 


THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 368 


carry four passengers but never taking more than 
two on these difficult flights into the interior. 

We speeded over the surface with swishing foam. 
But we did not rise. We ran across the river in the 
hope of picking up a helpful breath of air. We 
turned downstream. We ran upstream, but still in 
vain. We faced again toward the river’s mouth, 
where we bumped over the waves until at last our 
pontoons were free from the friction of the water 
long enough to permit us to acquire the necessary 
momentum. 

And then ... then the river dropped away! Was 
it afoot away? No, in the time it took to think that, 
it was a yard. A yard? Why, it was ever so much 
more than a yard! The river had dropped and was 
still dropping. ... 

We were flying! Actually flying! The sun had 
risen in a salmon sky. It was a quarter to six, and 
we were flying . . . with the river now far below us. 

Forty-five minutes later we passed the town of 
Calamar. It had taken us ten hours by river- 
steamer to cover the distance between Calamar and 
Barranquilla. We made that distance now by aéro- 
plane in forty-five minutes. 

As Colombia unfolded beneath us, I realized not 
only how flight is to annihilate distance for the 
travel writer, but I began to appreciate how it is to 


364 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


supplement that close and intimate study which 
every author must make of the land he is to describe. 

We beheld Colombia thus immensely unfold and 
reveal itself. | 

It showed us on the right the Dique, stretching 
away, a straight silver line between high green 
banks, connecting Cartagena with the great water- 
way at Calamar. 

In the vast valley of the Magdalena over which 
we flew, there was water everywhere: lakes and 
ponds, streams big and little; ponds and lakes and 
streams; straight streams and serpentine streams 
and streams that seemed to flow in circles; the Mag- 
dalena itself dividing and subdividing, sending out 
gleaming arms to embrace green islets. And we 
saw it all with the wide, free vision of the air. 

We calculated that in each hour of flight we were 
covering a distance which by river-steamer requires 
an entire day. When, at ten minutes of eight, the 
old Spanish town of Mompox was diagramed be- 
neath us, we knew that we were two days by river 
from Barranquilla, which we had left just two hours 
before. 

We were then flying low enough to get a sharply 
defined portrait of Mompox, with its streets geomet- 
rically laid out, its Moorish convent built about a 
square central patio, its church towers, its plaza 


THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 365 


upon which faced the cathedral, and, over all, roofs 
of dull red tile. 

I knew how hot and drowsy was the air in such a 
town, how blindingly the sun whitened the white 
walls of the houses, and how, from time to time, the 
bells in those massive church towers would summon 
to mass. I seemed even to hear those far-off bells, 
although in reality there was only the ceaseless 
deafening roar of the plane, which penetrated the 
protecting cotton in my ears. 

As we flew there was mapped out beneath us the 
baffling problem of Colombia’s transportation, 
upon which inevitably depends her commercial 
development. 

This problem lay like a great colored print, 
on which mountains were indicated in blue, rivers 
in bronze and quicksilver, with plains like green 
silk, forests of deep, dark, thick velvet, and at 
far intervals little geometric towns on the bank of 
some navigable stream. 

Upon this huge plan, huge in extent rather than 
in detail, for details were reduced in proportion to 
our height above them, there were clearly set forth 
not only the difficulties of Colombia’s development 
but the achievements of the indomitable little 
animal, man, who, far from retiring in despair, has 
vowed to conquer. 


366 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


The difficulties stood boldly out in the ranges of 
the great Andes, which run north and south, divid- 
ing the land into valleys and high mountain-circled 
plateaus, each isolated from the other by those pre- 
cipitous heights which forbid intereommunication. 

Rivers formed a gleaming network over this map, 
above which we flew. They seemed an afterthought 
on the part of Nature, whereby she would re- 
lent, to the extent of providing man with water- 
ways. There, undoubtedly, she had spread out 
rivers, like some colossal chart of circulation. But 
the rivers twisted and coiled, with no ideas on the 
subject of straight lines and shortest distances; 
rivers now deep and now shallow, imitating all the 
idiosyncrasies of the Magdalena. 

And there stood out also the achievements. There 
were the sixty-five miles of railroad from Calamar 
to Cartagena, the tiny steamers connecting Barran- 
quilla with the brief stretch of the banana railroad 
to Santa Marta, and the seventeen miles of track 
from Barranquilla to the sea. 

And then for a great distance there were no more 
railroads. There were only steamboats toiling up 
against the current or slipping easily down with the 
stream. 

In looking out from the air over the vast unrolling 
panorama of Colombia, I suddenly understood that 


THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 367 


studying a country without the aeroplane is like 
examining a human countenance bit by bit; an 
isolated eye, a detached mouth, an eyebrow; and 
then by an act of memory adding all together in the 
effort to see the face as a whole. 

I learned to know Colombia intimately, feature 
by feature; but it was in the air that I saw in 
perspective the face of the land; and it was like 
looking upon the broad sweep of an artist’s creation 
as it exists in his mind, seen in the mass with the 
detail to be developed later. 

In no other way can the travel author so compre- 
hend the contour of a land. 

I considered the impression which I retain after 
a study of other great rivers. I took for example 
the Yang-tse, which flows from the western borders 
of China, across the huge territory of the Celestial 
Kingdom, three thousand miles east to the Yellow 
Sea. 

And my memory I found to be made up of details, 
seen intimately, but without perspective. 

I saw the brown fields of winter with everywhere 
grave-mounds lonely or in friendly clusters, graves 
brown against a lifeless sky. I saw high cliffs and 
giant reeds and clumps of green bamboo. And — 
along the way I visited Chin-kiang, Nanking, 
Wu-hu, and Kin-kiang. I remember the trotting 


368 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


rickshaws, the shops, and the soft glow of colored 
lanterns, globes of warm color. 

Also I remember riots and dead Chinamen on the 
swarming Bund at Han-kau under the flaunting 
flags of then great nations, German and Russian, 
as well as French and British and American. And 
there still comes to my ears the mournful chant of 
toiling coolies. 

All this I find indelibly etched. But I had seen 
no farther than the banks of the Yang-tse. I never 
knew what manner of China lay beyond my narrow 
horizon. | 

Thus I realized that through flight even the vision 
of the mind is extended. 


At twenty minutes past eight we made our first 
descent: we landed at El Banco to deliver the mail; 
for the Scadta conducts the largest private mail 
service in the world, and El Banco in the Departa- 
mento of Magdalena is its first port of call. There 
we took gasolene and the mechanic inspected the 
spark-plugs. 

When we rose from El Banco it was to pass 
through a frothy sea of cloud, soft and thick and 
white; on up above this cloud-quilt to clear air. 

Through breaks between cloud and cloud I looked 
over to the perilous and isolated country of the 


THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 369 


Motilones Indians, reached only by canoe up the 
César River. But the Motilones are seldom dis- 
turbed by adventuring canoes, and when they are, 
what are poisoned arrows for, if not to provide meat 
for the tribe? 

The rumor of cannibals and the longest regular 
hydroplane service in the world! That is perspec- 
tive indeed. 

As we flew we could see, between the intervals of 
cloud, that we passed over stream and forest, miles 
of river and forest, forest and river, with only occa- 
sional and far separated villages. 

We flew over Puerto Wilches and saw stretching 
away in a straight tidy line sixteen miles of railroad 
track; making a brave start in the direction of its 
goal, the city of Bucaramanga, five days’ ride on 
mules over the eastern range of the Cordilleras. 
Sixteen valiant miles are all very well, but the 
Andes have yet to be scaled, and on the road to 
Bucaramanga mules can still afford to scoff at the 
pretensions of railroads. 

After El Banco the horizon mountains drew 
closer. They had removed the haze in which they 
had been enveloped. They were nearer, higher and 
more distinct. With their approach the country 
had become less marshy. We had left behind the 
grassy fields and orderly rows of bananas. 


370 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


We flew above forests across which drifted dark 
cloud shadows, forests where copper streams cut 
through deeply green masses of jungle. As we rose 
higher filmy clouds blew through us. They seemed 
to be going somewhere in a hurry. Far below was 
a lake. It seemed a little lake, and it was full of 
shadows, the shadows of trees around its margin 
and of clouds passing over it. The blue shadows on 
the tree-tops were deep dark pools with strange 
outlines. The river lay like a bronze serpent. 

We often fell into pockets of air—holes in the 
air—and climbed out again, keeping our equilibrium 
by a continual sideways tipping of our wings. We 
tipped and veered, and then tipped and veered 
again. I felt that we had ceased to be a machine 
and had become a monster bird with powerfully 
vibrating heart and sensitive wings. 


A little later we were descending above Barranca 
Bermeja, with the houses and offices and tanks of 
the Tropical Oil Company like mushrooms in hot 
glaring rows. 

These buildings grew quickly larger, and all at 
once a tiny speck on the surface of the river became 
a canoe. There was a child in the canoe. The child 
became immediately a man. And the man had fruit 
piled on the bottom of the canoe. 





THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 371 


We were turning, ‘‘banking’’ down to the river; 
turning sharply down with tremendous rush and 
speed and whir. We skimmed low above the water 
...low... very low. We struck with a bump; a 
series of bumps, diminishing until we glided 
smoothly like the fastest launch in the world, and 
fmally came skilfully to rest at Barranca Bermeja. 

It was very hot at Barranca Bermeja. Our pilot 
sat on one of the pontoons under the shadow of a 
wing, while we took on gas and the mechanic re- 
placed the used spark-plugs with fresh ones. 

We waited under the inadequate shade of the 
projecting roof of a little corrugated iron shed. 
The heat was breathless. We fell into questioning 
talk with a group of men who had gathered to see 
us land. 

‘“‘Had the Calamar passed yet??? 

‘*No, sefior.’’ 

‘‘The Ayacucho?’’ 

‘‘Not that either.’’ 

‘‘The Pérez Rosa?’’ 

Mor tat,’ + 

Boats which had left Barranquilla days before 
the Cauca had lifted herself into the air to fly for 
Girardot six hundred miles into the interior had not 
yet passed Barranca Bermeja. We had flown over 
them, indistinguishable specks on the river, crawling 


372 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


up against the swirling current at the rate of four 
miles an hour. | 

From Barranca the run to Puerto Berrio is short, 
and there we had also mail to deliver. And there 
the pilot allowed us a ‘‘little half-hour’’ for lunch. 

No Arabian Night’s tale was ever more glamor- 
ous than that lunch. The sun was as dazzling as 
the sun in a fairy dream of the tropics. The palms 
were as strangely beautiful as palms seem for the 
first time, or, after a long absence, much as a spirit 
might regard them who had returned from other 
worlds to look once more upon straight smooth- 
columned palms lifting regal heads about a white 
and balconied hotel; a hotel which was approached 
from the river by a long flight of steps, also white 
and hot in the fairy sun; steps up and down which 
nothing would be too marvelous to pass. 

So upon return to earth from the air is a spell — 
cast over all things. Yet does this enchanted world — 
seem somehow more real than reality. q 

For the travel author who seeks ever to keep alive 
the child-wonder in his soul, there is in such return — 
to earth an enhancement of young wide-eyed delight. 

The lunch at Puerto Berrio had the fleeting as well : 
as the magic quality of a dream, for it was indeed a q 
‘little half-hour’? that our pilot had allotted. And ; 
in obedience to summons delivered by a brown © 





THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 373 


urchin we hurried down those long steps to resume 
our places in the hydroplane Cauca, 4-9, waiting to 
fly to Girardot. 


In the river we found moored a sister plane, the 
Santander, waiting for the train from Medellin 
which was to bring more bank-notes to avert the 
threatened panic in Bogota. 

At Puerto Berrio I am convinced no breath of air 
ever even faintly stirs. We vainly manceuvered up 
and down the river. It was impossible to rise. The 
pilot passed over our two bags to the Santander, 
which was to follow us. | 

We made another attempt, and, relieved of just 
those few pounds, we skimmed the surface, and so 
lightly did we touch the water that we left only the 
merest line on its sheen. We skimmed, and sud- 
denly the river dropped. . .. We were up! 

The miracle of ascent was by this time sufficiently 
familiar for me to analyze it in penciled notes: 

Up... Werise as if lifted by great breaths. 
The breaths come in big puffs as though a giant 
breathes, refills his lungs, and breathes again. 

Lift. . . . Soar while the giant inhales. Lift.... 

Soar over broad river. , 

Lift ... soar... tip the great wings to main- 
tain balance. 


374 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


Fall into an air-pocket .. . lift... tip... and 
GOATS... 4% 

A copper river comes flowing into the Magdalena. 

Lift . . . with the abt breath of the giant. 
Lift onal soar. ... 

Blue haze lies on the mountains. Blue as the sky. 

Pocket . .. lift and tip. 

We tip with that slight rocking from side Be side. 
And always we vibrate with the force of the engine’s 
explosions, and always there is the beat, the throb- 
bing, ceaseless throbbing of the exhaust. 

There is no word to describe that all-pervading, 
deafening sound; for language was made before 
men flew. 

A white sand-bank glistens in the middle of the 
river. 

We fall into a series of pou We climb out. 
We soar and rock. 

There are fewer cloud-shadows on the land. 

Our breeze stiffens. The great throbbing buzz is 
louder. 

Pocket. 

Lift. 

Mountains like blue waves on the right, like waves" 
of surf rolling in. 

I am oddly not conscious of speed but only of the 
lift and fall, the rocking of the wings, and the vibra- 





THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 3875 


tion. But none of these things, even the violence 
of the breeze, gives me a sense of speed. The ever- 
changing landscape itself does not move. It simply 
changes. 

There is now a lake which magically becomes a 
forest and again a lake; a forest turns into a peak, 
and suddenly the peak becomes a river of burnished 
bronze. 

The mountains have advanced on their march to 
the river’s bank. The valley shrinks before these 
encroaching Andes on which lie purple shadows, 
large still shadows. 

We lift and rock and soar. We look at the valley 
through blue haze. In the lap of the hills lie fleecy 
clouds. We climb to more steady air with a mighty 
lift which makes me catch my breath. 

The Santander passes us bound for Girardot 
direct with a million and a half in paper money and 
our two travel-worn suit-cases. : 

Here I felt a greater sense of altitude than earlier 
in the day, even than when above the clouds beyond 
El Banco. 

I put my head out of the window and look down 
through space to the earth. I have so loved the 
beauty of that earth that it is strange I should glory 
in the sensation of complete severance from it. 
This severance is a separation more absolute than 


376 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


death, for in flight not even one’s dust and ashes 
remain upon the familiar little planet. 

I love to realize this space and this severance— 
to dwell upon it. 

For up there in the air, gazing down to a little 
earth with which one has no longer any tangible 
physical connection, things fall into their proper 
places, and one comprehends in a radiant flash what 
is of moment and eternal. All else fades and has 
no significance. 

This perspective differs from the perspective of 
memory. Memory is personal, dear, and essential; 
but because of the very closeness of this intimacy 
it often fails to escape prejudice. The detach- 
ment of flight encourages impersonal perspective, 
and impersonality makes for fairness and justice. 

I look down. There is a little boat on the ribbon 
of river, but I know from its shape that it is one 
of the big flat river-steamers, just a little creeping 
thing. It is easier to picture an ant-hill seething 
with emotion than to realize that such a slowly mov- 
ing speck should carry that vital cargo of tender- 
ness and greed, cruelty and kindness, peace and 
ambition. 

These specks which are boats seem so small as 
they move on the face of the river, and the river 
itself so small in the mountain-cirecled valley. The 








THE MAGDALENA FROM THE AIR 





THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 377 


people down there know nothing of the bold free 
sweep of great horizons. Their vision is as limited 
as mine had been on the Yang-tse, limited by the 
banks of the stream. For them there is no luminous 
emancipation of unchained vision. 

In looking down through that space which sepa- 
rates the world from the plane, earth-memories 
crowd the mind, but the soul is withdrawn. For an 
evanescent instant of time it is drawn back into the 
calm of the universal soul. Peace and stillness 
possess it. ; 

And so I put my head out of the window, to feel 
the force of the wind we create, and to gaze silently 

. down through space... . | 

I gaze, and again the great lft which always 
makes me catch my breath. 

All about us is the wild world of the Andes. There 
is no settlement or sign of life until we drop down, 
through the zone of bumpy air, to Honda; dropping 
into air as dry and burning as if it had been passed 
through a furnace. | 


We land on the sandy beach. After the cool 
heights Honda is hot beyond imagination or belief. 
Leaving the mail and taking on gas, we rise, again 
with painful effort; and no sooner are we up than 
we immediately descend, for the pilot has noted an 


378 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


alarming sound in the engine. He explains in his 
German-Spanish that repairs are necessary before 
we can go on. They will take at least two hours. 
Perhaps more. Meanwhile he will telephone to 
Girardot for another plane. But it is Independence 
day. Offices are closed. He is unable to get the 
message through. 

We cannot land at Girardot after dark. And all 
our luggage has flown on in the Santander. We are 
in Honda without a tooth-brush or a mosquito- 
netting. 

I sit in the shade, on the roots of a spreading tree, 
a bonga tree. To these new casualties by the way 
the air traveler must adapt himself, just as for- 
merly he was philosophical about fording streams, 
or about mules which elected to roll while his most 
treasured belongings were still strapped to their 
backs, 

So I sit waiting, strangely not for mules, but for 
the engine of a hydroplane to be repaired. 

Because it is a holiday, the citizens of Honda are 
strolling about in their best clothes. They come to 
stare and to ask where I came from and where I 
am going and why. I fan with the little Japanese 
silk fan which all through the hot country I have 
worn on a chain around my neck and I reply-as 





THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 379 


truthfully as may be to those still unanswerable ques- 
tions put by the citizens of Honda. Where are we 
going and why? The answering is the miracle for 
which the heart of man eternally waits. . . 

Meanwhile the mechanic and the pilot bury their 
heads ander the hood of the engine. 

‘<The magneto,’’ they explain, not very illuminat- 
ingly to me, I confess. ‘‘The magneto is a tooth 
behind.’’? With that they disappear again under the 
hood. 

And the citizens of Honda, having obtained from 
me all possible information, return to impart it to 
the rest of the population, leaving me to meditate 
and fan. 

‘“‘This,’’ I reflect, ‘‘this is Honda.’’ 

Over the grim bare mountains which come down 
to the river, still climbs the old Muisca trail, which 
was for centuries the only way into Bogota. 

Once all the varied life of that capital passed over 
the trail. Plenipotentiaries, viceroys, and bishops, 
fine ladies and generals, pianos and Paris hats, all 
traveled the Muisca trail on mule back, three days’ 
journey up from the river. 

The Girardot-Bogota Railroad is comparatively 
recent, and with its completion riches and ele- 
gance deserted the old trail. Freight-rates, how- 


380 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


ever, are high, and long lines of mules still carry 
sacks of coffee down to the river-boats at Honda, 
journeying slowly back with goods from the outside 
world. 

But the Muisca trail can never recover its lost 
importance. As the river-steamers have changed 
the river and the life upon the river, affecting even 
the jungle which mirrors itself in the rapid current, 
so the coming of the railroad has robbed the trail 
of its ancient splendor. And now the aéroplane has 
come. It may mean much to Colombia, whose river 
system seems predestined to furnish hydroplanes 
with landing facilities. It is but two years since the 
installation of air service in Colombia, and already 
there is evidence of a miracle wrought in that diffi- 
cult problem of Andean transportation. 

The planes flew into a great and unsolved puzzle 
where fractions of railroads came to sudden and 
untimely ends, dependent for their extension upon 
the raising of the vast sums required to conquer the 
Andes. And at these abrupt stops the traveler 
would take what in South America we call the 
‘*hurricane-deck of a mule’’; or he would be at the 
mercy of some river-boat, itself at the mercy of the 
volume of water flowing over the river-bed. At the 
terminus of navigation he might find another frag- 
ment of completed railroad, or it might be that it 





THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 381 


was an ox-cart, or possibly a lurching motor-bus, to 
which he must transfer himself and his chattels. 
After years of struggle, this great country of 
nearly five hundred thousand square miles is served 
by these uncertain river routes and by bits of rail- 
road, possible only where geographical difficulties 
have not been too great or their mastery too costly. 
I add together these portions of completed track 
—here a run of 16 miles, there 21 miles, 17, 60, 144, 
and so on; fifteen of these fragmentary lines, with a 
total of only 777 miles, while one route is separated 
from another by vast piles of menacing heights still 
unconquered: remaining as primitive as when the 
white man first came, zealous to carry the cross 
where gold might be found. Seven hundred and 
seventy-seven miles of railroad, and already the 
regular air routes cover nearly eight hundred miles. 
It was through the experience in the air that I 
became acutely conscious of each step in the strug- 
gling development of this land where Nature has 
placed the Andes like monster bunkers, as though 
she used them to add piquancy to the difficult game 
which we call progress. Thus from the air I 
comprehended the vision and the courage which 
each move in the game had cost, as it was played in 
Colombia. I was made aware of the effort, the dis- 
heartenment, the failure, the sacrificed lives, the 


382 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


triumph, and finally of the magnitude of what re- 
mains to be performed in this country, the extent 
of whose wealth is not yet even estimated. 

What the future holds depends upon the develop- 
ment of the plane itself; the reduction in cost of its 
operation and the increase of its ‘“‘useful load.’? 

Much that is now considered impossible may yet 
come to be, just as the once impossible aeroplane 
has come to be. In considering the future of air 
service, flights of fancy seem therefore legitimate ; 
and of these flights, one not incredible dream is that 
now undeveloped countries may adopt air service, 
without ever going through the intermediate stage 
of extensive railroad systems. As many of our 
newer cities skipped altogether the horse-car period, 
beginning life with modern electric transportation, 
so it is not beyond probability that countries difficult 
of railroad exploitation may to a large degree elimi- 
nate that sort of traffic and take at once to the air. 
For, after all, are not such miracles the order of 
our time? 2 

Thus, uncaging my fancy, I reflect, as I sit in the 
heat under the spreading tree at Honda. But when 
a line of mules trots in the dust of the trail just 
beyond the tree, for one little moment I would sweep 
away even the marvel of flight if I could go back 
to the old days on the Muisea trail! 





THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 383 


It was then that the pilot and the mechanic and 
the German language at last emerged from the 
depths of the hood to announce that we might start. 

We rose easily and lightly out of the scorching 
valley of Honda. The giant was again lifting us 
with mighty puffs, lifting us up through sacs air to 
air as smooth as new macadam. 

The Honda trail crawled over the mountains until 
we saw it as a mere thread which we were soon too 
high to distinguish any longer. 

Somewhere on our upward climb the Santander 

appeared, coming to the rescue, for we were long 
past the hour we were due in Girardot; but as we 
waved ‘‘All’s well!’’ she continued on to Puerto 
Berrio. 
_ Her passing left us in a world inhabited only by 
mountains. The forests of the Magdalena Valley 
had disappeared, and so had the wide valley. The 
river no longer spread itself over the map. It 
twisted at the bottom of ravines which separated 
mountain from mountain. 

In the singularly clear light so characteristic of 
_the high Andes, the mountains shimmered in color; 
violet and mauve, rose and orange; uncertain 
patches of translucent color with vague shifting 
outlines. 

As we mounted, the Andes themselves seemed 


384 COLOMBIA, LAND OF MIRACLES 


also to mount, to become higher and again higher; 
range upon range to the horizon. | 

I got a sensation of sheer height, towering height, 
unlike anything I ever experienced from the ground, 
even in the grandeur of the Himalayas. 

The sun was low and dazzling. We flew high. 
We were no longer lifted. We fell into no more air- 
pockets. There seemed even no slightest rocking 
of the wings. There was only vibration, the great 
throbbing roar, and, when I put my head out of the 
window, the strong rushing wind. 

The sun was sinking fast. On the right the snowy 
dome of Tolima, chaste and symmetrical, lifted its 
head from a cloud-lake of flame. 

All about us were piled high these Andes, and 
there were Andes below us, for we had left the wind- 
ing course of the river and were making a short cut 
over a range whose jagged upturned edge was like 
a colossal saw. These were painted mountains, as 
colorful as the Grand Cajion, while their deep gorges 
caught and imprisoned purple velvet shadows. 

An ever-changing opalescence played over the 
snow summit of Ruiz. Tolima now stood coldly, 
deathly white against a fantastic cloud of midnight 
blue. Then in a moment the sun was gone. And 
there, hovering above Girardot, six hundred miles 
from Barranquilla, we saw, as only an aéroplane 


THE LAND OF MIRACLES FROM THE AIR 385 


could show us, the majestic glory of the sun setting 
upon the stupendous Andean world. 

Again I was overwhelmed by a sense of expect- 
ancy, like the quivering suspense which precedes 
rain; a sense of something about to be, as though 
miracle were to follow upon miracle, the miracles 
of yesterday, and even of to-day being altogether 
inadequate, the soul of man demanding something 
more. 

It was because man had sufficiently desired, that 
flight had come; for, as the serpent says in Shaw’s 
‘‘Back to Methuselah’’: ‘‘Imagination is the be- 
ginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; 
you will what you imagine; and at last you create 
what you will,’’ 

And in the hovering moment before our descent 
from the high wonder of that Andean sunset, any- 
thing seemed possible. . . 


e 
— 


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386 





AUTHORITIES 387 


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388 AUTHORITIES 


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Cartagena, 1918. 

Ocariz, Juan Flérez. ‘‘Nueva Versién sobre le Fundacion 
de La Popa.’’ ‘‘Boletin Historial.’’ Cartagena, 
February, 1917. 

Patrén, A. Luis R. ‘‘Los Martires de Cartagena.’’ ‘*Bole- 
tin Historial.’’ Cartagena, 1918. 

Petrie, F. Loraine. ‘‘Simén Bolivar.’’ John Lane, the 
Bodley Head, Ltd. London, 1910. 

‘The Republic of Colombia.’’ Edward Stanford. 
London, 1906. 
Ponte, Andres F. ‘‘Bolivar y Otros Ensayos.’’ Caracas, 
919. 

Roman, A. Henrique L. ‘‘Las Murallas de Cartagena.”’ 
‘‘Boletin Historial.’’ Cartagena, October, 1918. 

Root, Elihu. ‘‘Addresses on International Subjects: the 
Ethics of the Panama Question.’’ Harvard Uni- 
versity Press. Cambridge, 1916. 


tie ee seal _ — ee 2 - s 
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AUTHORITIES 389 


Rosa, Padre Alvarez, ‘‘Don José Nicolas de la Floresta de 
Santa Iglesia Catedral de la Ciudad de Santa 
Marta.’’ 1739. A rare work quoted by Francis 
C. Nicholas in ‘‘The American Anthropologist,’’ 
1901. 

Saldanha, E. de. ‘‘Descubrimiento y Bautismo de Carta- 
gena.’’ ‘‘Boletin Historial.’’ Cartagena, May, 
1915. | 

‘<Eil Convento de Santa Cruz de la Popa.’’ ‘‘Boletin 
Historial.’’ Cartagena, February, 1917. 

‘Los Primeros Navegantes del Magdalena.’’ ‘‘Bole- 
tin Historial.’’ Cartagena, October, 1915. 

““Primer ‘ Auto de Fe’ de la Inquisicién de Cartagena 
de Indias.’’ ‘‘Boletin Historial.’’ Cartagena, 
June, 1915. 

Scadta. ‘‘Importancia de la Aereo-Fotografia y de la 
Aereo-Fotogrammetria en el Desarrollo Comercial 
y en la Cartografia de Colombia.’’ Bogota, Sep- 
tember, 1922. 

Scruggs, W. L. ‘‘The Colombian and Venezuelan Re- 
publies.’’ Boston, 1915. 

Steuart, John. ‘‘Bogota in 1836-7.’’ Harper & Brothers. 
New York, 1838. 

Tirado, Ernesto Restrepo. ‘‘Catalogo General del Museo 
de Bogota.’’ Imprenta Nacional, Bogota, 1917. 

Triana, Santiago Pérez. ‘‘El Galeén.’’ ‘‘Boletin His- 
torial.’’ Cartagena, 1918. 

Ulloa, Antonio de. ‘‘A Voyage to South America.’’ Lon- 
don, 1806. 

United Fruit Co. ‘‘The Story of the Banana.’’ Boston, 
1922. 

Urueta, José P. ‘‘Guia Descriptiva de la Capital del De- 
partimiento de Bolivar.’’ Cartagena, 1912. 

Veatch, A. C. ‘‘Quito to Bogota.’’ George H. Doran Co. 
New York, 1917. 

Vergara, José Ramén. ‘‘Barranquilla: Su Pasado y Su 
Presente.’’ Barranquilla, 1922. 


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